Second Catastrophe: Part I - Invasion
by Blackberry Avar
Summary: Five years after she ascended to the queenship, and four after she killed Scarlet, Ruby believes in peace in her time. Barely has she confided this belief then comes the evil tidings of an invasion of Pyrrhia. The world as the seven tribes know it must be fought for; else it will be extinguished by the onslaught of Wasp's empire.
1. Chapter 1

**The Coming of the Storm**

* * *

Looking back upon history, it is easy to say that our predecessors should have done better, and blame them accordingly. The disaster at Pzemisyl, for instance, or the fact that the entire Sandwing War of Succession – which from now on will be called The Great War, or World War I instead of The War to End All Wars – or the fact that the entire Sandwing War of Succession was based upon a misunderstanding.

We could've done better, we say. Obviously some general should've reinforced this position instead of that, attacked at a better time, used better tactics or strategy. Yet the fog of war is a tricky thing, and a decision in the heat of battle is a much different animal than one made by a historian laboriously documenting the annals of the past.

Never has this been demonstrated so well as in the Hivewing invasion of the eastern sub-continent.

**Caelon, joint Mudwing/S****ea****wing fortress, ****June 2****7th ****5,0****1****5****; ****located along the ****Eastern**** Island chain.**

* * *

It was a day just like any other day at the fort; a cool, misty dawn had turned into a cool, foggy morning, but by noon the fog had been dispelled by the warm sun and the water was perfect. Not that it mattered to Marshweed, who was the only warrant officer on duty at that time of day, the other two having taken leave last night.

They wouldn't be back until tomorrow afternoon. It was a small fort, Caelon, smaller than most, but that didn't mean much when it was located in the middle of nowhere; what with the main body of Pyrhhia some 1,200 miles to the west, it had never been threatened during the Great War.

Built to protect against a possible threat from the ocean almost two-hundred years ago, it was understaffed, underfunded and undermaintained, a backwater place used mostly for recruiting. After the end of the war there had even been talk to scrap the installation, but fortunately it had been repurposed for research and development.

After all, few would think that the newly-reformed Seawing/Mudwing alliance would be developing their newest secret weapon in this old place.

Made out of the newfound 'running pitch' extracted from the southern tar sands, it was an inciendiary designed for defense against a land-based enemy. At first it had been called napalm, but some clever soldier had come up with a much better name for it since. Hellfire.

The answer to the Sandwing and Skywing cactus bombs that had proved so deadly for twenty years during the War.

It was the best-kept secret on the continent, and it had only been live-tested once, in 5,011, the last year of that great conflict. The results had been so horrifying, so deadly and against so many tenets of morality that the project had nearly been shelved. Five hundred gallons of a prototype recipe had been poured into an enemy cave system, then set alight.

The conflagration burned for weeks, and when intel finally ventured in to see what had happened, more than one spook lost his dinner. Only a few bodies had survived, and those that had were nearly unrecognizable as dragons, charred beyond all belief, their scales liquefying and turning to glass. It served as only a small mercy to the investigators that an autopsy ruled the cause of death as smoke inhalation.

If any other government heard of this, if the dragonets of destiny heard of this, if even the royalty of _their own kingdoms_ heard of this then, then heads would roll. Literally. Even in this 'civilized' age beheading was still a legal and exercised punishment in some places.

So experimentation with the stuff had been halted for a while, and it was only now, four years later, that Special Armaments was looking into it again.

And it was because of this on that fine day that Marshweed was keeping an eye out for anything that didn't fit in with the ordinary, whatever that was on this base. And what he was seeing now was definitely out of the ordinary.

A lone dragon flying towards the fort, obviously exhausted, barely able to stay above the surface of the sea.

"Get me a spyglass," commanded Marshweed. The order was relayed to the SaS officer (Services and Supply), a spyglass was found, and soon Marshweed was peering at this curious dragon.

First off, whoever it was was green. Not just any light green, but a dark, rich green. Perhaps it was a Rainwing then, but as Marshweed peered closer he realized that Rainwings weren't known for having spines, which the newcomer did have.

Was it a hybrid? If so, this could be an interesting opportunity for R&D, who already ran a division devoted to finding what made those peculiar dragons tick. Marshweed didn't know what was worse; that he was actually contemplating the idea of handing over a dragon to those conniving psychos, or that those conniving psychos were actually allowed to run experiments on innocent dragons.

The find was told to a sergeant, who told his superior, who told his superior, who told his superior, who was the commander of the base, a major general, no less, and the major general ordered that this newcomer be brought into the base and secured in the brig until an interrogation team could be mustered and higher-ups could be contacted to decide what to do about all this.

In the usual fashion he, or it, was designated Hybrid One, or H-1, until further notice.

All this wasn't important to Marshweed, of course, who received the order and went out to fetch Hybrid One, along with a wing of sixteen soldiers and another wing as backup, just to make sure that if Hybrid One decided to put up a fight it would be outnumbered and restrained with as little fuss as possible.

The general had been explicit; H-1 must be captured alive at _all costs_.

They reached the dragon in about twenty minutes of flying and pulled up alongside it, or rather, her, for the dragon was a she.

"Who are you and what are you doing here?" asked Marshweed, prepared for a confrontation, but there was none.

The newcomer held up a talon, signalling that she couldn't speak because she was out of breath. They put her in a sling and brought her back to base, and during the journey questions were asked.

Her name was Swordtail, she said, and she was a Leafwing from another continent, Pantala, escaping from the tyrannical Hivewings.

When she was asked who the Hivewings were, she made an obscene gesture and gritted her teeth. They were nemesis of the Leafwings, she said, dangerous dragons who had committed genocide on her people and even now were on their way to burn Pyrhhia to the ground.

Marshweed was skeptical, but then he'd been skeptical during the Darkstalker debacle and look how that had turned out. So he listened to what she had to say.

"Why are they coming here?" he asked. "They've left us alone this long, why not now?"

"Because they are expanding. Their Queen is bloodthirsty, and their tribe is running out of space. They destroyed the forests of my people, and if you do not fight back they will destroy _you_."

Even after they'd put her in the brig she stuck to her story, at times angry at the disbelief of the Seawings and Mudwings, whom she deemed fools, but otherwise completely rational.

No one could've known what she said was true at the time, but Major General Arrow decided that the threat, while perhaps exaggerated by Swordtail, could still be credible, and he arranged for a courier to leave for Seawing High Command – the non-royal one -, tomorrow morning, because it was too late for one to be sent now.

In the meantime a few dragons were found that had used to be on interrogation crews, and they were sent to the brig to confirm Swordtail's story.

She told them everything, or almost everything, although they didn't know that.

The Hivewings had ambushed her and a gathering of her tribe in the poison jungle, along with two Seawings whose names were – and here she stuttered, obviously not having the best grip of the Pyrhhian language; Big Wave and Turtle.

Hivewings were hive creatures, she explained, and their Queen could use mind control (something the interrogators didn't believe at first). What one Hivewing saw, they all saw, and any escapees were quickly rounded up and taken prisoner. She had only gotten away because she'd had to relieve herself and so managed to evade the main body of enemies.

It sounded too farfetched to be credible at that point, and for the next two days Swordtail languished while all sorts of communication went on between the fort and the High Commands of both the Mud Kingdom and that of the Seawings.

That was before the first piece of news arrived of another refugee from the north who the Dragonets of Destiny had taken an interest in (at this there was a groan from all involved). The dragon's name was Luna, and she also had news of what was going on in this overseas continent. It was confirmed that the Hivewings had mind control and telepathy over their own tribe, as well as a strong military presence.

Oh, and they practiced slaveryc, and they had four wings, and they had poisonous tails not unlike the Sandwings (who had been a pain to fight). And now everything made perfect sense. Big Wave was Tsunami, the crown princess of the Seawing Kingdom, and now she had been captured by hostiles. The threat was real, and it was coming.

It is reputed that Queen Coral's first reaction was to mobilize the Royal Marines at once.

Alas, she was far too late.

**July 1****st****, 5,015; Seagull Islands, ****located in the Great Western Ocean.**

* * *

The Queen's army is vast; covering the surface of the atolls like bees on honeycomb. The Queen's army is organized; perfect columns of freighters and soldiery descending and ascending like a swarm of hornets. The Queen's army is loyal; all hail their commanding officers with patriotic fervor. Most of all, the Queen's army is victorious.

They had come to the islands like a sudden storm, appearing from the horizon like driving hail, whence they fell upon those few Seawings there – who had apparently been using the place as a research station – and slaughtered them; of the thirty who had been there to begin with, only one remained, and he had been taken back to the continent for indoctrination as a slave.

It would hardly have been a fight for a militia, let alone the proud 1st army, which at present was only composed of two cohorts of 35,000 each, for logistical reasons.

Each cohort was composed of three divisions, which in turn were composed of three orders, which in turn were composed of three regiments, which in turn were made of three brigades, which trickled down to battalions, which trickled down to companies, which were made of three wings, which were made of the most basic military structure possible, the flight of four.

70,000 in all (not including support battalions), the largest outside invading force Pyrhhia had ever seen in over 5,000 years. All these dragons had to be watered and fed and trained and trained and trained, and kept well supplied with weaponry and what passed for armor in those days – oh yes, they were planning an upgrade, but for now things had to stay minimal because of the material cost – and all that, which meant the cost would be staggering.

Each soldier was only allowed to write one letter home per week, but it added up, and the Army Mail Service was forced to transport almost a ton a day, no small feat when it is considered that the distance between the Seagulls' and Pantala was over a thousand miles and five hundred.

All this could not have proceeded without the blessing of Her Highness, and the venture would surely have collapsed if it were not for her impeccable planning and strong-willed support.

Even now the last cohort of 1st army was on its way, but the generals wanted to get the ball rolling, and soon. Already word had been received that several traitors had, by devious maneuverings and dishonorable tactics, managed to escape to this new continent and warn their piddling leaders of the great invasion.

Whether they would be believed or not was an open question, but Hivewings preferred to take no chances. Already the first orders were taking to the sky for the long haul flight, 9 in all in a majestic V formation, V for Victory. They were the probing force, the first feelers of an unstoppable juggernaut, but even their presence would shake the weaklings in Pyrhhia to their very core – or so the generals thought. After all, 2nd cohort meant _business. _

In one of her rare fits of what passed for happiness in the existence of Queen Wasp, she allowed herself to smile. The rebels at home had almost been wiped out, and their suppression would only be the beginning notes of a world-wide opera, one that would end in her ultimate rule.

Yes, today was a good day in the foundation of the Empire.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

**I had quite a lot of fun writing this a few years ago, quite a lot of fun. I've gone a long way since I put it up. If you want to be part of the (small) community you can check out my discord at hittips colon slash slash discord dot gg slash nUDjBjB**

**Thanks! And if you liked the chapter and the chapters ahead, do drop a review. It makes my day.**


	2. Contact - Raid

**Contact – The Raid**

* * *

More than 400 dragons. 51 commissioned officers. Dozens and dozens of NCOs. A support company that was the best of the best and a supply train carrying with them over a thousand tons of food, medicine, ammunition and other equipment all day, every day over hundreds of miles.

It'd been a long-ass flight to get here from the Seagull islands, though shorter than the one from the mainland, and the least Staff Sergeant Byrd had expected was a scuffle or a chance encounter with the enemy, but they hadn't seen another living soul since they'd left over eleven hours ago.

Byrd belonged to 108th recon brigade of the 2nd Cohort of the proud 1st Army, commanded by Lieutenant Thorn. More specifically, he was the NCO in charge of 3rd company, which Thorn had assigned the unenviable responsibility of providing a forward screen for the rest of them.

Which meant that he and his wing were braving the frigid air at 9,000 feet, far above and ahead of the main body of his group, keeping an eye out for any potential hostiles in front and to the sides. Noon had faded to afternoon, and afternoon had become evening, warm, golden summer light glowing off the clouds and making the sea sparkle.

Below them was a tiny island barely larger than a sandbank, three-hundred yards long and with a bit of grass growing on the lee side of a dune. Byrd paid it no mind. They'd rested and eaten less than an hour ago on an islet no bigger than that one, and he'd seen plenty of them since, though doubtless the navigators had marked it down on their charts. They were getting closer to the mainland, and soon their brigade would space themselves out and fly low over the ocean to avoid any scouts or chance encounters with civilians taking a fishing trip.

They had their orders. Whoever spotted them had to die before they could warn anyone else. No threats to the mission would be tolerated. There would be no mercy, because this had to be a complete and total surprise.

Another island came into sight, this one bigger than the first, longer. They were nearing the coast, then. A tiny, dark strip coalesced at the edge of the horizon. The continent.

"Land ho!" shouted Byrd. "Tell the others."

Corporal Lancer fell back from the V formation, went down to the rest of the brigade to inform Lieutenant Thorn by word of mouth. They had no signal flags; too visible. There was a minutes' wait, then Lancer came back again.

"Plan A," he said, and knowing exactly what that meant, the company stopped heading forwards and descended in a corkscrew, going down to the deck at the maximum safe speed as Thorn's group wheeled and did the same, separating themselves as they did so until there was more than 500 feet between each flight.

Spread out as they were, Byrd had no way to communicate with the rest of 3rd company, so he had to rely on their training to carry them through the difficult maneuver. Plan A called for a small screen at low altitude to spot any shore cities or towns as the vanguard of the brigade approached at slower speeds behind them. Avoiding any possible contact with civilization, they would disappear onshore and begin recon at once.

There was no high-level screen, something which made Byrd nervous, but he could see the reasoning behind it; there was more of a chance of slipping past the enemy gaze that way. Which begged the question of why HICOMCN had sent an entire brigade for this job instead of individual companies or even a battalion. Oh well. Better to have the numbers and not need them than to need them and not have them.

Reconnaissance in force.

Luckily no contact was made, and the first wings put down on the shore just before nightfall, muffled thumps on the sand marking their arrival in the new world.

"Sound off!" came the command from Thorn.

There was a moment as everyone counted everybody else.

"1st company, here."

"2nd company, here."

"3rd company, here."

"4th company, here."

And so on, until everyone was accounted for, not an easy task in the dim light, but it was accomplished with the usual efficiency and soon a very temporary camp was set up for their supplies while scouts were sent out to explore the area and report on the terrain, as well as any sign of nearby enemy presence.

Naturally, Byrd's company was chosen for the scouting job, split up into its individual wings commanded by warrant officers.

If the islands they'd passed on their flight had been pretty, the mainland must've been beautiful beyond description in the daytime. As it was, their eyes were ill adjusted to the darkness, having spent most of their lives in the Hive, where every night the flamesilk lanterns provided a warm glow. Now they could barely see anything even where the moon shone strongly, only the trunks of huge plants that reached high into the air, some delicate, some stout, all of them unlike anything they'd ever seen before except in picture books; majestic and awe-inspiring.

It took a while for Byrd to realize that he had seen his first tree, and then he was flabbergasted, though he didn't show it. His men were not so scrupulous, jaws dropping as they took in it all, finding the realness of the experience to be almost overwhelming. Almost.

Byrd whipped them back into shape and continued the patrol, but save for the wonder of the flora there was nothing else of note, save for a tree that had had its bark scraped off on one side, but a thorough inspection found that the marks could not have been made by a dragon's talon, and thus it was likely the work of a 'bear', whatever that was.

Clear. For at least five miles around their landing zone there wasn't so much as a dragonet or a hermit's hut.

For hundreds of miles up and down the coast a similar scene played out, as most of the recon brigades discovered almost nothing of note. But not all of them. Some ran into patrols, but their concentrated firepower combined with the element of surprise made it almost easy for the Hivewings to destroy their enemy.

Strange dragons they were, blue and green and sometimes purplish or pink with webs between their toes and odd scales that almost seemed to glow, if that was even possible. They were easy to defeat. Weak.

A few found coastal towns or forts as they approached the mainland; these were skirted around and their position was passed along to the invading force following less than five hours on their heels. But the fact was that they were already known to 2nd cohort in advance. Queen Wasp had had her eyes on Pyrhhia for longer than anyone knew.

But still, live intelligence was needed, and the recon brigades were glad to oblige.

**Fort Sea Lion, City of Abalone, July 1st, 5,015: 4 Hours before Contact.**

* * *

To the casual observer looking towards it from the sea, Puck Hill would've looked like any other hill near that place; rather like the back of a turtle. Just outside the town, it was thoroughly unassuming, except perhaps as a soft glade or a good spot to have a picnic or as the sort of knoll where dragonets would learn to fly.

But then, there were no dragonets allowed in that place, or picnics, or civilians, for that matter. For Fort Sea Lion was almost entirely underground, with only one way in and one way out; long, orderly tunnels within leading to large, organized storerooms that had been hollowed out during the War with months of hard work; some filled with food, some filled with weapons.

It was still a military base these days, but it was quieter now, less rigid, and its security… more lax. Here was a town that the war had passed through, and yet four years after the fact life went on for most as it had for centuries. The sudden peace had brought good times.

For Lance Corporal, no - Sergeant Starfish Wells, tonight was a good night. Today was the day he'd gotten a promotion and two week's leave, and now he would be celebrating it with his buddies from his company in the marines. Not the Royal Marines, mind you, just the regulars, but he was fine with that. He didn't need all the reputation, not him.

Because he was _finally _off of patrol duty, which was the boringest damn assignment he'd ever had, even though he'd served with the Marines for four and a half years. He was a veteran of The War, if you could call him that, for he'd only joined six months before its end and had only seen two or three battles, which was nothing compared to some of his fighting brothers.

He had a lot of brothers; which meant he had a big family, hence the fact that he had a last name.

Now he was going into town to visit his sweetheart, Crest. They would be married soon, and he'd promised not to get drunk because of his promotion like he had when he'd been upgraded to Private First Class way back in the day. So he wouldn't. Not that he had an addiction to it like some of the other vets did, but he'd indulged from time to time before.

Besides, he needed to save the money to buy her the perfect ring. He had his eyes on one, had been saving up his paycheck month after month to buy her one with a sapphire instead of one of those boring steel rings that he saw on the talons of old people.

He'd keep the ring a secret, of course, but he'd buy it tonight, after he'd visited her first. They would go on a date that weekend; maybe he'd tell her then.

He was almost to her street by now, still thinking about his plans for the future. He passed a peach stand, asked the merchant if he could buy one. Normally they were an expensive fruit, but today there was a sale and they were half off. On second thought, could he have two?

He walked away with his coin pouch a few coppers lighter and a bounce in his step. Then he was at her place and he knocked on the door, twice, like he always did, and she let him in, smiling as usual, whereupon he broke out in a happy grin and she kissed him on the cheek.

He was the luckiest guy in the world.

"I bought a peach for you."

"Oh, you shouldn't have," she said, but he could tell that she was grateful.

"They were on sale. I knew you liked them, so -"

"Thanks."

"No problem."

They both bit into the sweet, juicy fruit, enjoying the slightly spicy taste of the southern variety, larger than most other peaches. Wells almost ate his whole, pit and all, but Crest savored hers more, and she finished later.

"Well, I'd say that was well worth the money, wasn't it?"

"Yes. Yes it was."

"Yeah. I've gotta be off to celebrate my promotion soon. My buddies ought to get back from patrolling in a bit, and I don't want to miss them. Staff Sergeant is letting them stay up late tonight."

"Can I come with you?"

"Uhhhh.. sure? I wasn't really planning on it, but I guess you can tag along."

"I'm keeping an eye on ya'."

They laughed.

"Where are we going?"

"The Silver Run. It's a Sandwing place. Better than going to a Mudwing pub any day."

Soon they were out of the beautiful house and on the street again. Already the street lights had been lit and people were igniting the lanterns that hung over their doors. Walking was more romantic.

Then they started getting to the shops and the restaurants and the stands. Some were closed, some were open, and some looked like establishments it would be embarrassing to be seen walking into, but they passed those and turned a corner, finding themselves before some outside seating and beyond that, an open door and a placard over it that said _Silver Run_.

It was only then that Wells realized that he couldn't buy the ring while Crest was around, or it wouldn't be a surprise.

He'd get it tomorrow then, or after she went.

"Dinner for two?" asked the waiter.

"Yes, but we're expecting company."

That was fine, he said, and soon they had a table and a drink of water. They talked for a while, and when his buddies didn't come he ordered an appetizer, and they talked over that, about what they'd do when they were married; where they'd go and who they'd visit and how many kids they'd have and how soon he planned to retire. He would, sometime. Just not yet.

An hour passed pleasantly in that way, but Wells grew more and more anxious.

"They're still not here."

"Maybe they went to the wrong restaurant or something?"

"No. Don's too smart for that. Can I go look for them for a little bit?"

"Be back soon."

"Don't worry about me!"

Maybe they had gotten mixed up, visited the wrong pub or something. He'd told them the place exactly! - What was taking them so long?

"Excuse me; have you seen my friends? One's kinda skinny and tall and the other three look something like this -"

And so on. But no one knew where they were, and he was forced to return to the Silver Run in frustration.

They had dinner, but it wasn't as enjoyable as he would've liked it to be, though the food was better than good and he ended up having a single glass of wine. They split the tab and Wells escorted Crest home, then flew back to the fort to check with his commanding officer. He had a bad feeling about this.

Getting in was easy; the sentries at the entrance to the tunnel knew him by sight, hardly bothering to verify his metal dog tags before stepping aside. Things had settled down this late at night; most of the daytime personnel had gone to sleep by now, and there were only a few still left awake to keep watch.

The dragon in charge of enlisted scheduling was Staff Sergeant Glaucus, and there was a good chance he was in bed. Wells checked the office; he wasn't there. Which meant that he had probably turned in for the night, and even with his newfound rank Wells didn't have the authority to look through the materials himself; it wasn't in his chain of command, a countermeasure to prevent spies from walking in and getting valuable information just like that.

Which meant that he'd probably have to ask the warrant officer who was in charge around here to get a clerk to root through the papers, which would take time, and the warrant officer might be in a different part of the base.

He could ask around to learn if they'd reported in, but that would take time.

Or he could do it the easy way and badger somebody into doing it for him, preferably one who wasn't aware that he wasn't supposed to be giving orders.

It took some searching, but eventually he found a private in the hallway, whose name he didn't remember and probably wasn't important.

"Who are you?" he asked. Maybe he'd missed the shiny new insignia on the other dragon's shoulder, maybe he actually had the guts to stand up to him.

"Sergeant Wells. I need to know if one of the patrol wings reported in today."

"Sir!"

An automatic salute. It felt _good _to have that rank.

"I need to know whether or not one of the marine patrol wings reported in today. You know, the schedule?"

"Wait, you mean the check-in sheet?"

"Obviously. There's paperwork for everything, isn't there."

A rhetorical question, but the private answered it. "Yes."

"Typical."

He lead the dragon back to the Staff Sergeant's office and let him in. It was only a few minutes before the check-in sheet was found and Wells was allowed a look.

Don's wing hadn't reported in since 8:30, when they were supposed to get back, but because of curfew the Staff Sergeant had probably left the matter hanging when he went to sleep, expecting them to come in later and for the next Staff Sergeant to check it out. A thirty minute delay was nothing much; it happened all the time, but if they were tardy much longer they would be reprimanded.

Don was never late. So what had happened to make him delay? He was too experienced not to check in before he left for town, right? He'd only been granted a two-hour extension after 9:00, after which he was supposed to turn in. It was twenty minutes to eleven now.

And speaking of which, where was the new Staff Sergeant?

This was getting very odd, very odd indeed, and he didn't like it.

Maybe it was the fact that he'd had a glass of wine at dinner and the alcohol had given him a confidence boost. Maybe it was the fact that he'd just gotten a promotion and he felt daring enough to wake up Glaucus. Maybe it was the fact that his gut feeling about this just wasn't right. On its own the tardiness of the Staff Sergeant working the night shift wouldn't have been a major problem. A problem, but not a major problem.

Patrols didn't just disappear. Something had to happen to them to make it so, and it was better to be safe than sorry. Glaucus was woken up and told about the missing sentries and the situation of the Staff Sergeant. It turned out that Glaucus had also been worried about Don's patrol, but since 30 minutes was within the acceptable margins for that kind of thing, he hadn't said much.

And since the Staff Sergeant on the night shift wasn't around to raise the alarm when Don became more than two hours late, the sentries had simply assumed that they must've missed Don coming in during the shift change. And since no one had told anybody else about it, the rest of the base either didn't know anything was wrong or assumed that they'd made a mistake.

Even if he'd gotten in an engagement with a group of small-time pirates or street criminals, he should've dispatched a messenger to notify the base of the fight so they could send reinforcements. But he hadn't, and it'd been over two hours. A fight of that size would be over in about 20 minutes, give or take, not this long.

Either he'd been ambushed and overpowered by some unknown force or he'd deserted. Both of those things weren't likely.

So they woke up the Captain, who woke up the Colonel, who woke up the dragon in charge of the base, Brigadier General Hammerhead, and _he _said that search parties must be sent out at once, which meant mobilizing the base, which meant waking up about a battalion of dragons at once.

That was when the sentry came running in, screaming something about enemies pillaging the city.

General Hammerhead ordered General Quarters, but by then it was too late for the poor, poor town of Abalone.

Wells was already out the door, because he knew that he needed to do one thing and one thing only, or he would never forgive himself. Save Crest.


	3. Contact - Getaway

**Contact – The Getaway**

* * *

**City of Abalone, July 1****st****, 5,015: 5 ****M****inutes after Contact.**

Abalone was falling, and Starfish Wells did not intend to fall with it. They were sweeping through the town – the dragons that looked like wasps and had four wings and stingers that might work like the Sandwing stingers he had seen.

One more street and he would be at Crest's place, one more street -

Wells dashed past one of them lighting a torch; a smash of Wells's tail and the firebrand was knocked out of the dragon's talons and dropped to the dirt with a clatter, the enemy already lunging over it with his barb ready to strike -

Someone tripped up the dragon and stabbed it, and Wells looked back at the Sandwing, the proprietor of the Silver Run which he had been at only a few hours before and nodded thanks, just before the Sandwing's eyes rolled in his head and he slumped to the ground, lifeless from the barb which had impaled him and had been meant for Wells.

Wells whipped his head forward and scrammed, getting away from the dead men as fast as he could, rushing past a group of Mudwing sibs making a valiant defense against the enemy in the pavilion of a bar – Wells wanted to fight, wanted to warn them about the wasps diving on them from behind, but the words stuck in his throat and he could only gallop past, talons thumping to a tune of screams.

There was someone at Crest's door – pulling a Seawing out – he needed no more reason to jump with legs powered by rage, wings tucked and claws ready to rip, piercing the thin scales of the wasp who hadn't bothered to wear armor at all, and now was paying for it with his life, kicking with all his might and bending his tail towards Wells -

The two tumbled through the dirt and Wells came out on top, punched the wasp in the family jewels and let him roll away screaming, scrambled to finish the job and saw orange and black stripes looming on him from the side to tackle him as he had tackled -

"STARFISH!"

– and then there was a whizzing over his ear and the wasp who would have ambushed him collapsed with a bang and a crack.

Wells looked to the source of the noise and saw Crest on the step, helping up the Seawing on the ground with one forearm and clutching more bronze dishware in the other.

"How much time?" she asked.

Practical.

The wasp Wells had punched picked itself up and lunged towards him. Crest tossed Wells a metal scale-comb and Wells threw it into the wasp's snout, breaking it, and it went off shrieking in some language that sounded much like Common but with an accent that made it all but incomprehensible.

"Not much. The fort should hold them off for a little while but you need to get to the sea right now."

Crest looked between him and the metalware, as if wondering whether she would have survived if Wells hadn't come to her aid, and then to the dragoness standing on the dirt, bleeding blue blood from her arms and dazed from the shock.

"I'll go with you," said Crest, eschewing Wells's offer to escort her to safety.

"We know it's too dangerous. What if I'm killed?"

"You won't be. Bring as many as you can," she said, and shook the dragoness beside her. "Move or we die."

"I don't know…" said the dragoness.

"Give it your all," said Wells. "Ten minutes and this place will be a clean sweep."

A wasp buzzed their street and threw a torch into the next house. Buildings were built strong; many years of experience had taught the architects that, but years of peace had made their owners stockpile flammable things in them. Within moments the windows were dancing with flame.

With that kind of air cover…

"Follow me!" called Wells, and dashed off along the ground, then remembered who was with him and slowed to a quick lope. Their best hope was to get out of the city to the west, away from Puck Hill and – wait a moment.

Dammit, he'd forgotten his ring, the ring he thought of as his even though he had not bought it yet.

"What's wrong?" asked Crest, turning the corner, house-mate in tow.

"Nothing," said Wells, turning his head at a canter. "I forgot something, is all."

They went on, saw a young Seawing digging at rubble, tried to persuade him to go but could not. His parents were buried or taken, the poor kid, and he would not leave without him.

"Don't look," said Wells, his face grim.

They passed the intersection where the Mudwings had been, their bodies no longer animated with life but stiff in death, red blood staining the flagstones brown, and hurried on from that place, as if running through a dream of hell, only it was worse, for their hearts pounded and joints were weakened with fear. Above them dragons roared and hissed, fighting for the air which they had taken to because they had thought it was safe.

Wells and Crest dashed around a corner and headlong into four enemy soldiers wearing thin cloth armor, their spears set down as they wrestled a family of Seawings out of their homes. Rookie mistake. Wells picked up one of the spears, noted the iron tip and odd balance and jabbed at a wasp with it, aiming for his chest but slicing through the wings, two of the four. That was enough to make it hiss with pain, and the two hurried past, Wells brandishing the spear with plenty of bravado and little of confidence, just to keep the soldier from rushing him.

"Come on," said Wells in his loudest quiet voice, looking back to see the dragoness still peeking out from behind the corner, eyes wild. He could've shouted and the rest of the soldiers would've missed him, so tempestuous was the ruckus.

She shook her head.

Wells turned and loped away before the soldier he'd tussled with could tell his superior he'd been stabbed. Already he felt the first pangs of guilt – he could have helped that family, he could have saved them, somehow, even though he would have only got one and the rest would have ended him – there was always that sense that there was something he could have done, a sentence he could have said that would have persuaded the dragoness to leap. Perhaps she would make it to the sea.

"PSST! HEY!" came a male voice from above them. Wells looked up. "I bet you need a talon. I saw you had to slip past those hornets back there."

Wells did. The voice came from a Sandwing. Too scared to go alone. If there'd been someone with fire along when they'd passed that family… maybe things would have changed.

Still, he could have helped, if he'd been in a position to see.

Aware that he was holding the spearhead above him in such a way that would skewer the Sandwing if he glided down, Wells lowered the wasp-made weapon, its shaft lit by the orange of the spreading fires behind him.

"Be quick," said Wells, and the guy pulled himself through the window and dropped free.

"Nonam," he said, which Wells imagined was Sandwing shorthand for 'No-name'. "You?"

"Wells, just Wells. Crest, got anything?"

Nonam raised a talon just in time to catch another scale-comb.

"Last I've got," said Crest.

"Moons am I glad to see friendly faces," said Nonam, and Wells pardoned him the swear.

Oddly armed, without armor and riding the last updrafts of what hope remained to them, the trio proceeded through a dying town, wasps buzzing them with more grace than Wells could ever hope to achieve. If they weren't sacking his town it would've been majestic.

But they were, so it wasn't, and the three almost made it to the brush and into safety before they met their next set of enemies.

Almost.

Wells had better vision in the dark than Nonam did, and that was why he noticed the wasps shooting at them with blowdarts first. They whizzed through the air and splintered off brick walls and clay sidings, splotching them with oily stains; poison, Wells realized.

It could be disabling poison instead of the magical death spit type stuff, but Wells didn't want to take chances.

"Get by the doors, get by the doors!" he yelled, and Crest flattened herself to the building closest to the archers, ducking out of their sight, Wells only a moment behind. Where Nonam was Wells hadn't the faintest idea.

The wasps hovered, sliding in the air until they were parallel with the empty street, closing in on the ground for a better shot. Several things happened at once.

Wells pushed Crest behind a peach cart while jump-beating for a flashy takeoff, hoping to draw some of their fire. He could see the shadow of the first dart leaping from the leader's blowgun, arcing through the air what seemed right at him – and then he realized that he saw that shadow because of the flame boiling upwards underneath the wasp, hitting him, wrapping him in oily Sandwing fire -

Then Wells looked away, because he didn't wish that kind of death on anybody.

Nonam had scaled the side of one of the buildings, crisped their commander with a copious amount of flame, and the wasps hadn't replied in kind, maybe because they didn't have fire or maybe because they thought Nonam still had fire left, though with the amount he'd spewed he needed to be a Skywing to still have pressure, or maybe they'd never seen fire-breathers before, for they were scattering faster than the commander was falling to the ground.

There was no way to keep Crest from seeing the body this time, if it was anything to see; only a burned corpse with flaking scales and all the integrity and charm of a block of charcoal, its four wings – how odd; two was obviously more practical – shattered into crackling chips, smoke still wisping up from them.

Crest trotted out from behind the peach cart, trotted out and gagged.

"It's horrible, I know," said Wells, holding her close with his wing, and only then noticed the hole the dart had punched in the membrane, a few inches left and down from real flesh. Frightening, how such a tiny thing could kill him. He shivered.

"How's your fire?" he asked Nonam.

He spat a glowing ember into the dirt for an answer.

Pity there was no salvaging the blowgun.

"Still got the comb?"

"Yeah."

"Weapon of last resort, eh," said Wells, already on the move. "Were you a soldier?"

Nonam wiggled his wings for a shrug, already loping along. "Just about. Sergeant's patch?"

"I'd forgotten I was wearing that," said Wells. This Nonam could easily be a deserter or a draft-dodger. "I'm on leave. Just got promoted."

"Ahuh," said Nonam, casting an eye on Crest.

"Not what you're thinking."

"If you say so."

They came to the outskirts of the town, turned and looked behind them. The sight was almost beautiful, the way the flames danced above the rooftops which they had passed beneath in their odyssey, blind to the wider destruction, the echoes of roaring flowing through its streets. This was the remnant of Abalone, and to the right was Puck Hill, swarmed by the enemy.

He should be there; he should be fighting it out along with his compatriots, letting other dragons escape. Dragons like him.

Then he stepped back from the circle of firelight, turned and jump-beat his wings for a takeoff.

There was another fort near, one to flee to. He hoped they wouldn't kill the messenger.

Because the only way he could go was forwards.

And forwards they went, sometimes in front of the tide of enemy soldiers, beside it or behind it. In less than two hours during that fateful night, the crack units of 14th Recon Regiment had crushed any resistance they encountered along their route, driving into the Pyrrhian shoreline like an arrow along with the two sister units of their order nearly 4,000 strong, not counting logistics.

So fast did the blow fall and so great was its impact that the Hivewing advance often outpaced the news of their invasion, even fifty miles inland.

The regimental commander, Col. Pincer, had leeway in his orders – he was free to use any tactics that he wished within his Area of Operations, which meant that he was free to drive, encircle, and raze almost whatever he wished, save the villages, for they were to be used as bases.

At this point their advance was defined not by how many enemies they had to fight but how far Pincer felt was too far from their logistical network, for his unit had only two days of supply on talon after the long flight.  
Serious casualties were few and far between thanks to the element of surprise and excellent first-aid.

Shortly after making a clean sweep of their AO the 14th continued to press onward, still exploiting the value of surprise, signal engineers leaving behind bonfires to mark their passage to the following logistics units, who, loaded down with supplies, could not keep up with the faster dedicated recon unit.

Far away to the south a fort burned brightly, rising smoke forming a haze and a false dawn, giving light to the land which had hither been illuminated only by the moons. The real dawn would come some five hours later.

Fairfield was encircled and forced to capitulate in a matter of minutes, before most of the townspeople knew what was happening – they were lucky in choosing to surrender then. The scattered households on the plain often only took a knock on the door. Sometimes there would be a veteran inside who would fight back; but always for naught.

All this Wasp knew at the time of its happening, though she was a great distance away in the Seagull islands; to lead from the front she needed not, for that was for her braver generals: she spoke with them directly through the new form of communication – sometimes it was better to use resources rather than suborn.

At the other end of the line was Major General Krait, 1st Cohort, the joint highest ranking Hivewing on the ground. His head was remarkably calm, considering he suspected – and in this Wasp took great pleasure – she could disappear his memories of everything he had ever done.

The librarian was asleep, and suddenly Wasp had, in her mind, vanished from her quarters and taken form in a fortunate aide standing next to his general in the main square of a quaint little dragon town where the tallest building was three stories and the inhabitants were primitives.

"Your orders were to preserve the villages," she said, and without looking: "Why is the coastal town on fire?"

"Certain enemies breathed fire, ma'am. Cl. Pincer determined it was best to let them self-immolate, and I decided not to spend dragons putting it out, as at the time we had surprised some type of underground fortification and taken it with minimal casualties."

"The military prisoners are being held apart from the populace," said Wasp, knowing before she had been told. "Have the soldiers put at hard labor and a junior officer killed for each instance of bad behavior, civilian or otherwise."

The general balked. "It would take time to send a messen -".

Wasp was impatient, and she did something she'd rarely done before, but now planned to do regularly; invested the general with _power._ His legs buckled at the hocks and his wings twitched, his face screwed up and teeth clenched of pain, the pain that came from feeling the feelings and seeing the vision of a hundred dragons now that she had delineated his control.

The queen looked to the Lieutenant General standing a few feet from the scene with what she knew to be soulless black eyes. "You are in charge should he perish."

Ordinary Hivewings were so weak.

"Ma'am, he may have a bursting in the brain -" began the Lieutenant General, and halfway through he found that his mouth refused to open.

Krait got upon his haunches, his composure shattered, his confidence departed and a pulsing migraine arrived. A lesser mind than his would've been cracked to atoms. But he had something new; he had power, and in a moment Wasp made sure he knew how to use it. The pain made any question of morality a moot point, though his conscience fought anyway, and lost. Consciences had a habit of dissolving in the presence of ultimate control.

"The enemy -"

"Is being rounded up now," said Wasp for him. "I expected nothing less, General."

* * *

**Wasp Hive, July 2****nd****, 5,015: 11 Hours after Contact.**

The stars are bright in the sky and there is a fresh breeze blowing through the tower, a tower rising high above a web of stays fixed to platforms high above a flat, empty desert beneath, bereft of everything save scrub. A door opens and shuts and a dragon slips into the hexagonal room: reddish-orange and with black stripes.

Already inside is his second-in-command.

"G'night sir," says a lieutenant to the boss. He would say good night, wouldn't he? He doesn't remember anything and that is merciful for the dragon, for at that moment he looks at his commander-in-chief and wonders what has happened to make the imperial signet hang askew, the four wings flutter about madly, the eyes stare off into space.

"G'night, sir?"

And General Dauber walks past without a word, passes the Silkwing busily dusting the Hivewing office that has been dusted a hundred, a thousand times and yet is being dusted again. Such a simple, inane existence; difficult, yet ignorance is bliss, and where in the morning Dauber would have told the Silkwing to run and fetch him a mug of water now he passes by like a ghost, the stinger in his tail dragging along the ground behind him.

And as Dauber retires into his quarters late, late that night, the memories of the afternoon come back to him.

Three days ago had been the big day. Wasp had arrived at the tower in person, escorted by a dozen of her honor guard, their armor black and their eyes red and their spears polished; twelve of the most trusted dragons on Pantala.

Wasp shooed them out like a Silkwing would flick away so many flies, and they went, tugged in the pit of their stomachs by the nervous anticipation of the consequence of even slow obedience; a fraction of a second slower than their queen should've liked and they were gone, down the gloomy pit and into the flamesilk memory hole, and their descendants degraded in the books of reckoning to commoners.

It was an old art, this, and unfair to say who possessed the other – Wasp or the ancient intelligence, both caught between a rock and their partner's unyielding, hideous strength in an ever-shifting deal with arcane devils.

He is weak. They wrangled him, taking turns with him like two dragonets arguing over a toy, or two dragons struggling with a sharpened spear. From thence hither, death was the only escape, and even that doubtful.

If a dragon be between her control and the control of himself, he can speak with others – yet not control them. Wasp is ruler, and ruler she shall remain, and though Grand General Dauber sees the depth of the terror and the very violation of his being that is that rulership when he is of his own mind after accessing that power, he also knows that his rule of his self may be taken away from him if he does or he says anything wrong.

She may order him to impale himself and he will do it happily – terrifying – yet does she read his thoughts, see inside his mind? Too dangerous to wonder if that were the case, and yet every time he tries not to think about it he thinks about it, and his mind wanders back to it in his idle hours and the idea stalks his nightmares when he sleeps.

Mind-reader or not, she relishes in his fear.

He starts when he is awoken, flares his wings and poises his stinger before he remembers it is of no use if he is to be taken away – but it is only his lieutenant.

"Good morning, sir," the dragon begins, as if there were such a thing as a good morning when every night is hell. "We have a Leafwing problem."

And Dauber's head swims.

* * *

**The Skywing Kingdom, July 2****nd****, 5,015: ****17**** Hours after Contact.**

"I was always interested in power," said Ruby, the red scales true to her name the brightest thing in the formerly gilded Skywing throne room, now embellished with flint-heads. It induced a sense of practicality in visitors to the kingdom compared to the silver trophies and twenty-four carat cups of yesteryear. "My mother wielded it like a hammer, and there I was in the background as a different version of myself, thinking that I could do it better and distill justice into the world."

Her guest was a subdued red, close to grey, standing at ease a few feet from the sharp, hundred-yard drop to the terraces below. She was a dragoness, still coming of age though a few years out of her bodily dragonethood, and looked for all the world like she belonged in this kingdom till the frills behind her jaws broke her Skywing outline and she became discordant.

"It's never that easy," said she. "Can you do this for me that, can you stop him from doing that this, Nightwings and Rainwings bloodletting throats one day and deep in love the next, and all the while Peacemaker to look after to make sure he doesn't become Darkstalker again, or do anything monumentally stupid like his older Nightwing brethren seem to be doing all the time. It's never a peaceful conclusion like in Coral's scrolls. My reason was yours, but I was never groomed for it, and no matter how badly Scarlet trained you, some training is better than none."

Glory, queen of the Rainwings.

"It wasn't worth the abuse," said Ruby.

This palace she had inherited from her mother and Scarlet's mother before her, and though the war was over and the nightmare ended it was awfully quiet and empty compared to what it had used to be back in the heyday, before dragons started dying left and right and favorite teachers and mentors were sent to training schools and the front and never seen again. It rose from the mountain as a crown, swept down the craggy slopes as a rocky necklace and placed its queen upon a lonely spire all in the center.

"Will Tsunami assume the throne from Coral?" asked Ruby. "Me, you, her, and perhaps Sunny in the future if Thorn glides down and Sunny takes the risk."

"Sunny wasn't at all irritating when I was cooped up with her for four years," said Glory, "no, not at all. In truth, the Eye of Onyx would pick her if it needed to, I'm sure of it. Tsunami I don't know about. She doesn't like Coral very well, but I don't think she'd kill the queen over it."

"Talk about it," said Ruby. "I didn't like killing Scarlet as Ruby and I didn't like it as Tourmaline, though my mother certainly deserved it. Was I really her child?"

"There's no way to tell," said Glory. "Tsunami doesn't have responsibilities like we do, only her younger sisters. She and Sunny and Clay went adventuring, with Peril attached and failing miserably at being discreet."

"No harm no foul," said Ruby. "Moorhen is alright, and we know Thorn is on the straight and true. I don't think Coral would cause harm to anybody, and then with you and myself being on our kingdom's thrones, there's a chance we'll have peace in our time."

"Peace in our time," said Glory, looking over the ledge with a warm expression on her face as a squirrel nibbled at an acorn in a young oak tree growing from the new path garden. "There are no soldiers in my kingdom, not anymore, though to say there were any to begin with was a stretch. There are so many Rainwings who haven't yet seen the world."

"The Skywings will always have a guard," said Ruby. "It's part of our culture, and I've no inclination to deny it. The bad old days of mobilization are gone, but that reminds me – Queen Snowfall has the potential to be pretentious."

"Five good queens and one bad egg. I think we'll manage."

A Skywing talon rapped a sharp rattle-tap on the floor.

"My Queen, may I enter."

"Of course, Marshal Eagle," said Ruby.

A Skywing trotted in, his scales rough and bruised from sparring and the battles of the recent war, though shining with a dull sheen around his neck where the turning of his head had caused the new coat of raw-tuna scales to bleed through before he shed his old covering.

"It's the Mudwing Kingdom. They have an emergency."

Ruby's jaw set and her wings quavered. There was fear in her, but she concealed it well.

"Tell me."

Glory – imperturbable, formerly acrimonious Glory – stirred on her feet. Acid green roiled at her ear fringes before it folded into the red facade.

"Queen Moorhen is under attack," said Eagle, acknowledging Glory's presence with a sidelong glance and nothing more.

"From whom?"

"We don't know."

Glory and Ruby sensed each other at the corners of their vision, knowing both of them were running the geopolitical calculus.

"The Mudwings were disarmed and unprepared," said Eagle. "The enemy are striped, black and red, and orange as well. We have conflicting reports of them possessing four wings or two. Whoever they are, they're not from this continent."

"And you are sure this is true?"

Eagle's face hardened into a tired grimace.

"I saw the civilians flying for safety, the casualties being carried off on tow ropes. Whatever they're facing down there, it's real. The invaders have reached the Mudwing villages, and they are within two hundred miles of their palace, closer now that you're hearing about it. Your castle staff wouldn't let me in for four hours, they wouldn't believe me."

"Make sure the castle staff get a reprimand, then," said Ruby. A pause as she thought. "We don't want to get involved in another war. Our people are rebuilding."

Disappointment reared its ugly head in Glory's heart; disappointment rather than anger. Who could blame Ruby for doing what she was about to do?

"I am willing to send aid to the Mudwings," said Glory, her voice near faltering at the end. It never did, but often it came close.

"Your tribe is not required to bear the burden," said Ruby.

It was about time the Rainwings stepped up to the plate. Beat the invasion, attain a greater political stature, go home and use that advantage to turn her kingdom into a competitor. Easy, right? That niggling doubt in the back of her mind told her to focus on the now, to use the big picture as her occasional guide rather than the source of every decision.

"We can and we will. I won't let Moorhen fall. A foreign tribe strong enough to make the Mudwings capitulate is a foreign tribe more powerful than we."

Eagle raised an eyebrow at the young monarchs' loquacious bickering. Ruby noticed it first, and held her tongue on the well-mannered retort.

Ruby appeared to change her mind. Glory's stand had convinced her.

"I will do what I can," said the Skywing queen.

She'd better, and quick.

"Have the Seawing Kingdom contributed anything?" went on Ruby. Four years of leadership had strengthened her foundations, changed her from the frightened, insecure dragonet she'd once been into something more.

"Coral and ROYDAMCOM are away without leave. I didn't get news of any authority more commanding than a lieutenant; the Seawing fellow with his wits most about him was a dragon named Wells, along with his fiancee."

"Has there been any contact in the north?" asked Ruby.

"No."

"Send a messenger over the top and get some contact with the Seawings; we'll need it," said Ruby, as Glory stood by and watched with a sinking heart, pulled down by the weight of despair. Fifteen minutes talk was all it needed to send the continent into war for the second time in a decade.

"Any other orders?" asked Eagle.

"Make sure our coastal border is secure. We're vulnerable. Mobilize the palace guard if you have to. I don't know what we're up against, but we're better safe than sorry."

Embedded in those words was the unspoken thought '_I trust you.'_

"Yes, my queen."

Eagle departed silently, the bearing of bad news crushing his step. It was only when he was out of earshot that Ruby said: "Oh moons, not again."

Glory knew how her friend felt.

"I'm going back to my kingdom," she said. "I'll keep up correspondence."

"Good luck on the journey, and fair winds," said Ruby.

Glory stepped between the pillars of the open colonnade and looked back, her fringes roiling blue with appreciation.

"Thanks," she said.

Then Glory leaped. Ruby watched the Rainwing queen fly south-south-west, a path that'd take Glory through the north of the Mudwing kingdom before reaching the rainforest, and Ruby shook her head. Glory wanted to see what was happening with her own eyes, her safety left in the dust. It was so much like the Glory of four years ago, when she first had become queen.

Ruby withdrew from the tower and glided to one of the walls, ambling atop the edifice like she'd done in her younger days as a dragonet during the war, when there was no one to talk to except Scarlet, Vermillion and Peril. What palace guard would speak to the princess if it meant drawing the wrath of a tyrant?

Speaking of which, the guards were on the pavilion now; spears in talon, wings folded at attention, five score of them, and Eagle besides. The soldiers were male, most of them. There was something about war that attracted a dragon's mind; ego, or something else. The bored ones were the veterans; half of them born to kill, part of Scarlet's dragonet soldier program that took young Skywings and turned them into something else, before they had a chance to grow. It was the program that had begun with a grand marshal's death and ended with Peril, the dragons between sent to war at a young age. They fought and they died, and then the living fought again.

"We're going to war," said Eagle, standing at the head of the line, and the veterans' eyes lit up like firecrackers.

"The Mudwings need our help. You've fought with them and against them, and you know how tough they are. An unknown enemy has come from our eastern shore and invaded them."

If the greenhorns felt trepidation they did not show it.

"You know better than anyone else what you're getting into. Before the militia is mobilized, you are the first, last, and only line of defense. If any of you are not up to the task, I wish you to leave now; I would be ashamed to fight in your company."

None stirred.

"Captain Thrush, you are responsible for readying your dragons. I will requisition supplies for a two-week expedition, and we will leave on the morrow as the first expeditionary company."

"Sir, yes, sir," said Thrush, and saluted twice; once at Marshal Eagle, standing before him, and once towards Queen Ruby, perched on the wall, to the shout of the soldiers behind him.

"SIR, YES SIR!"

"Good," said Eagle, the tiniest wry smile flashing on his snout before it disappeared and he was all business again. "Break!"

The twin lines of dragons dispersed and vanished towards the armory. Eagle turned and looked at Ruby, now gliding down to him. Her back claws clicked on cold stone as she flared and set her feet.

"There's little planning on this mission. It's informal and rushed," he said. "It bothers me, but all the same I know if we wait we won't get anything done at all, and our aid will be for naught by the time I – they get there."

"You want to go with them."

"I do."

"Permission denied," said Ruby, watching Eagle's brow for that trademark wrinkle of discontent. It came and was gone: he had accepted it. "You'll have to stay here, mobilizing our troops."

"This crisis came at the worst possible time," said the Marshal.

"They always do," said Ruby, "or they wouldn't be crises."

Solitary in the courtyard, two dragons considered their fates, and then Eagle said, "Yes, my queen."

He had his doubts, but he would keep them to himself, and she knew that, and he knew she knew he would. That the Mudwings needed aid he was certain; that the Skywings were required to give it to them he was not. All the war the Skywings bore the brunt of it in Burn's Alliance, from Icewings to Mudwings to Seawings to Sandwings. Their martial culture demanded they continue forward, and yet he did not want to be the pillar for another tribe to lean on.

It all depended on Thrush now.

* * *

**City of Abalone, July 2****nd****: 1800 hours, 1 Day after Contac****t.**

In the bloody remnants of an occupied city underneath a darkening dusk sky, Major General Krait nursed his headache. The world around him teemed with the minds of lesser souls, dragons he could control, dragons who gave him a worse migraine than studying all night as a War Academy cadet, not to mention the soldiers in the field telling him all sorts of conflicting things, and on top of all that the wailing of the captured civilians over the fallen.

"This is driving me crazy," he said to his lieutenant general, one Mayhart. The dragon, steadfast as he was, nodded.

"We need more logistics."

Mayhart nodded again.

"We need to keep moving and keep them off guard."

It was becoming a triviality at this point.

"But I can't do both. No, don't nod again, give me some ideas, or I'll force it out of you," said Krait.

Confronted with this alarming predicament, Mayhart spoke.

"We could forage their agriculture, sir."

"Yes, I know that, but they don't have the common decency to stockpile it in hydroponics farms or centralized storages, no, it's spread out all over the countryside!"

"We could forage their agriculture, sir."

"You already said that. There's simply too much going on down there for even someone with my skills to handle."

"We could have third division do it, sir."

"They're occupied," said Krait.

"What about second cohort, sir?"

"Ah. There's an idea. Those mooks wouldn't mind if I borrowed a regiment or two, now would they? Serves them right for being late to the party."

"I agree, sir," said Mayhart.

"Shouldn't take too long. I'm tired of waiting for our supply people to become competent."

They were competent, and he knew it, but he needed something to be angry about when everything was going so well. In the first few hours they'd made fifty miles inland on all their salients, and now, nearly a day later, with the 10th Order of Second Cohort linking up from where they'd swept down from the north, they had the enemy in a pincer trap. The only way for the sea dragons to get to their native territory was south, to the sea surrounding this continent, or north, to the bay rapidly emerging on their maps. The swamp dragons, on the other hand…

Difficulties. A hundred and fifty miles out of the coast and they were finally running into some organized opposition, slowing their progress to perhaps seventy miles a day on tomorrow, and while that might make the logistics pukes happy it certainly wasn't making him happy, and what didn't make him happy wouldn't make Wasp wake up on the right side of the bunk, and so he had to do something about it.

Even if they continued at this pace they'd make their goal in less than two weeks. The continent was estimated to be about a thousand miles wide, just large enough to hold these swamp dragons and a few of their ilk, those firebreathing yellow ones he'd heard conflicting reports about – damn but he had the time to look into it himself with his power – just large enough to do that, and the shape their supply train and their chain of command was in he'd have been surprised if whole kingdoms hadn't come out and surrendered in a week.

The enemy was undisciplined, unexperienced, undersupplied and badly led. Seriously – how hard could it be?

There were the supply issues, but those would be caught up with later. Like anyone whose life is mostly secure and who has surplus hours waiting to be used productively or whittled away, Krait twiddled his thumbs and shaved at the surface, a scrap of sawdust here, a balsa cutting there. In an instant he was in what the locals called Abalone, watching through the eyes of a soldier lusting after a china tea-set; the most expensive thing the dragon would ever own, till the sergeant came in and told him it was for later, for the town's professional pillage.

Queen Wasp would take the creamer of every cup.

Then he was fifty, a hundred miles away, hovering where rolling, crusted earth met the still water of a choked pond and stank with the putrid odor of dragon-death. A strange dragon broached the muck with a humid roar and Krait impaled the muddy beast with a spear dripping red blood over the old coating of steaming soil. He held the body in check for a moment later, using eyes not his own to take in his handiwork, then spit on the failed swamp dragon and receded from the seat of control; the stem of the soldier's brain. The confused, broken reaction which came from being a guest in the self lasted a moment, then transformed to bravura when the cheers of nearby enlisted and the approving nod of the wing sergeant broke the soldier's mental haze.

He saw none of the yellow dragons. They flitted about in the back of his mind, the impressions of other dragons' memories. A glimpse of roiling, terminal fire boiled in his mind before it was gone and another replaced it; the viewer's body prone and charcoaled upon the Abalone street. A golden scale gave away its owner in the fields of green, choking trees; a volley of darts hissed into the flora, and whether any touched their mark none could tell.

Far to his north he felt the presence of another great force; 2nd Cohort under Venom's command. Her dragons were swiftly expanding from their original beachhead along the coast, flying and fighting. Beyond this he divined little, for his power did not extend to them; his authority was limited in scope and reach, and he knew even if he had the command he would be little able to utilize it.

"Mayhart, I have a headache."

* * *

**Skywing Subcontinent, July 2****nd****; 1930 hours: 1 Day after Contact.**

In a rolling field where the grass grew long and dry and the carbonized tree stumps emerged from the scrub like mushroom caps after a rain, a Hivewing recon brigade made camp. To north and east of them ran a green smudge on the horizon, the mark of the thick forest they'd struggled through last night and in the morning before they'd come to this open ground, and not a moment too soon. Now it was afternoon, and they were stopping for a short bite.

Staff Sergeant Byrd ate with his soldiers, dragons and dragonesses stamping their feet and rustling their tails at the reality of conquest in this expanse of new land.

It was the expanse that worried him.

"The land is charred here," he said to his Lieutenant-in-command, Thorn. "The -" and he struggled with the unfamiliar word, not often spoken since his grandmother's day "trees are burnt and the scrub has sprung up where there used to be forest, sir."

"You think dragons set it on fire?" said Thorn.

"Yes, but I don't see who, sir. There's the prisoners we caught in their forest cabins, but I haven't seen enough dragons to warrant… this."

He picked up a black bough and snapped it in half over his tail to prove his point. It was rotten, yet unmistakably the scent of charcoal floated up and filled the brigade's nostrils. He believed in Hivewing supremacy, and it would be a while before that belief was challenged, yet all the same the traces of fire made him cautious. Fire was an unnatural thing, something that meant circumstances had gone horribly wrong. A single flame, left unsupervised, could destroy a Hive.

"What do you think of it, then?" asked his superior.

"Press on, sir."

And Thorn nodded, heard flapping and looked to the heavens, to the the patrol gliding down from on high. They saluted habitually and delivered their report. Soon there would be no bothering with reports; just communication centralized and distributed by the minds up top.

"The sector's mostly clear sir, except for about four-score of armed red-type dragons grouped in our AO about five miles ahead. We think they spotted us."

"Four-score?" asked Thorn, skeptical.

They had found their dragons.

"Get a message out to the companies on our flanks; tell them we've found an enemy group. I'd prefer them to surrender quietly if possible. It saves time."

"Yes, sir."

"Signaliers! Blow horn for takeoff and engagement. Byrd, prepare your force."

The staff sergeant dutifully beat his wings and skimmed the ground to third company, still eating their bland rations; hydroponically grown, dried greens mixed with cultured crickets. And civilians wondered why dragons didn't like cohort food. He arrived as the brass blew.

"Stow everything and get off the ground," he said. "Patrol spotted an enemy group and we're going to meet them."

Their first real fight! The dragons of third company fastened their things in a hurry and rose to the sky with the rest of the battalion, leaving the engineers to erect a marker of their passage. The red dragons were about three miles off now, having closed the distance since the scouts had spotted them. Whether this was from curiosity or hostility was impossible for Byrd to divine until they got closer. When they'd gotten within a half mile of each other Thorn ordered them to hover midair while the strangers hovered steadily over the updraft coming from the windward side of a hill.

Then Thorn sent Byrd forth to parley, tail girded in a white napkin, signifying a truce. Of their adversaries there were perhaps two score and a half; a mere ninth of the brigade when it was in full array, though it was not. Four of the nine companies were splayed out on the flanks and one was bringing up the rear for operational security. Along with the engineers left behind at the campsite, that left approximately a hundred and twenty fighting dragons against fifty; still a vastly uneven match, but nothing like what it could be.

The dragons before him soared a dozen wingspans above the ground; red and orange most of them, with long, narrow bodies and a single set of large wings instead of the commonsense four. Most were armed with spears. A few bore javelins in their talons and in pouches, and one or two had nothing. A single dragon tucked his wings halfway in and glided gently to the clumpy grass slope, touching down with a light thump.

Both sniffed lightly, taking in the other's scent, and then the talking began.

"Lay down your weapons and surrender," said Byrd, and the strange dragon cocked his head and looked askance. Byrd devolved to the simplest of Common, stressing each syllable.

"Give up."

"No," said the dragon, unyielding in the face of almost three enemies for each of his own.

That word remained constant in either dialect.

"We will kill you if you don't," said Byrd.

It had to be done.

The dragon shrugged. The stones of that were astonishing. "No."

"Consider."

The red opponent did not understand, or pretended not to understand. "I am done here."

And with that it turned and flew away, perfectly exposed for Byrd in the second he needed for a killing blow. He hesitated, and the moment was lost. Byrd retreated to his group, wings buzzing as he ascended.

"He says he won't give in, sir," he said to Thorn.

_The fool._

"He wants to hold?"

"I believe so," said Byrd.

"We can take him," said Thorn. "No one would fight to the death, no one. Capturing them would've saved time, but they're making things difficult. You're on the right flank; second company will cover my left. And stow that napkin."

Byrd did.

The fiery zeal of the enlisted was lacking from the officers' posture: they did not hunger to kill, but rather to achieve their object. The enlisted would murder and and rape and steal, and the officers might order them to do it, but for most of them a different anchor held their hearts in check. In Thorn Byrd saw common sense and proper caution. In Thorn's boss he saw little; in Wasp he saw even less.

She was a good queen, though: he was yet sure of it.

He looked out over the unborn battlefield and saw the enemy above them, strung out like malignant stars above the dirty brown and yellow scrub. They wheeled, their turns wider than those of Hivewings, but cleanly executed and with little skid. Were they faster than he, slower? Any intelligence from other sectors was rapidly outpaced by the recon brigade, and if 1st Cohort had learned any lessons about these dragons he was in no position to hear them.

Now the enemy came, soaring easily above his altitude, their wings borne on muscles the size of their necks; majestic if not for their hostile intentions. They sliced the ether on pinions sharp as knives, turned towards him in a slight dive and accelerated with their spears outstretched.

A Hivewing wavered.

"Stay tight!" yelled Byrd. "Bristle formation, three deep! Blowguns on my mark!"

Perhaps the enemy anticipated the Hivewing blowguns as spears, for they continued on the straight and narrow, though the dragons on the engaging side of 3rd Company raised their spears, forming a shock front against which a charge would fair ill.  
"Mark!"

Thirty-two darts sung invisibly from Byrd's company, and one or two of the enemies shuddered at the wings, yet bore on. They parted at the bristle barrier with a flick of their tails and unleashed sheets of flame inside his formation, tearing it at the seams, and then they were gone.

"Regroup!" cried Byrd.

Momentarily his company was disorganized, and that was all the time the enemy needed. Forty-seven dragons winged back into the bristle crescent, some badly cut in the wings and body. The enemy carried poleaxes and billhooks as well as spears. Clearly he had underestimated them.

There was a straggler, a dragon who'd dodged too much and was stuck outside of the formation, three-hundred yards below.

"Climb!" bellowed Byrd, even as two of the fifty descended.

They chased the Hivewing soldier off, and there was no time for Byrd to order a flight to detach and rescue the dragon – his command structure was too rigid. One dragon buzzed the lower flank of the crescent, dissuading anyone from going out and helping the abandoned soldier, and the other, flying oddly jerkily, slew the detached Hivewing soldier, then glided to the ground.

That dragon was one of those poisoned in the first pass. He had climbed up again, held his position for a second, dived and still had enough energy in his bones to kill.

What was the hardiness of these adversaries?

"Second company, second company!" came the yell from Byrd's 2iC. The commander of second had given up his position, chased after the enemy nipping after his flanks.

"Move to support!" ordered Byrd, scanning above and below and around him. The enemy had gone after second company to a dragon, and he and Thorn were unfettered. All the same, 3rd Company was strung out like beads on a line while they flew, and that made him ashamed.

Seeing the approach of ninety dragons to the aid of a group that itself equaled their number, the enemy blew a sharp blast on one of their horns and extracted themselves from the melee one by one, diving out and using the speed gained that way to retreat to a fair distance. It was probably to converse with themselves about the invisible peril of the blowguns.

They left two Hivewing casualties and one of their own in their wake.

"Moons dammit," said Byrd, when it became clear the enemy would not retreat any further any time soon without being pushed.

Fifty against a hundred and twenty, and the fifty had won strategically in the skirmish.

"I don't want to see that ragtag behavior ever again," he told his soldiers. "You looked like a bunch of civvies heading for a candy stand, not the disciplined soldiers you are. I want double duty on watch tonight, and travel exercises the first chance we get."

"Sir, yes sir," they chorused. After that disgusting showing, he expected nothing less.

* * *

**Author's Note: I say it, I say it, I say it just about every time, but thanks for reading all the way through this chapter and sticking with me to the end. I had a hard time getting started with these military scenes, but once I got them in motion I couldn't stop writing them, and I decided to cut it here before I went to a ten-thousand word long chapter. Please tell me what you think in the reviews. Should I keep making longer chapters, or should I tone it down to 5k and deliver faster updates? Your opinions are always appreciated, and so are your suggestions for dragon names****.**

**Make a good enough character and I might just include him in the story one way or another.  
**

**Signed, Blackberry Avar.**

**P.S. Follow this story or I have no responsibility for the Hivewing who may eat you (page 184 of the Pyrrhian Legal Manual Article I Section II says this is loophole hasn't been closed, yet). Black out.**

**May 13th, 2020: Fixed a typo.**

**July 19th, 2020: There were multiple formatting errors, which bugged me. They've been fixed now.**


	4. Contact - Reacting

**Written: April ****26****th****, 2020 – ****May 8****th****.**

**Published: May 17th, 2020.**

* * *

**Contact - Reacting**

* * *

**12 miles west of Abalone: 90 Minutes After Contact, July 2****nd****, 5,015.**

It was a quiet night, for the three refugees of Abalone's conflagration. They flew on their wings, and when their wings dragged they stumbled forward on their talons, and in a few minutes took to the air again, plodding an unyielding pace towards the one site he knew had to be reached. The dragoness leaned into his side.

Relying on him. Trusting him.

"Crest," Wells said, voice heavy with exhaustion. Boy he was out of shape. "How much longer can you go on?"

"Long as needs," she said.

"Only another two kilometers."

The setting moons cast long, tenuous shadows on the hills, deep wells of darkness the troughs between the crests. It reminded him of playing on the ocean surface as a dragonet, of the voice that comforted him when he'd learned a brother died in The War.

_Everything's gonna be OK._

The shallowing of the darkness in the east cast light upon the west; ahead of them a small fortress on a hill gradually melted from the night; black-within-blue, the sharp lines of its battleworks obscured by the oblique properties of the wee morning.

Nonam trotted to his right, the snout of the Sandwing grim and decided, eyes flickering from side to side as the Sandwing picked a path without the aid of Seawing night vision. The dragon fluttered golden wings moodily, willing to undertake flight but hesitating to ask it of Crest.

"One more flight," said Wells, coaxing.

It was something already to ask a dragoness to go on like this, and another to have her go and do it. Drooping wings met the air with an uneven beat and she took to flight, steadied by his tail. They skimmed over a grove of rustling saplings and dropped on the grey battlements before a half-conscious night watch.

"Bwha, who goes there," came the voice. Wells realized it was a she. He saw his reflection in the soldier's eyes and he realized he looked like hell.

"Sergeant Wells, soldier of the Seawing Marines; Crest, and Nonam, a Sandwing," he said. "Abalone is under attack."

The watch stared at him with bleary, unsympathetic eyes. "Ha ha, very funny," she said. "And the truth?"

"That is the truth, ma'am," said Wells. He threw down the bronze scale-comb, and both smelled the scent of blood not that of a Seawing's nor a Sandwing's. "Look east and you see the light. Abalone is burning."

A faint humming caused him to pause.

"They're coming, you hear it?"

"With all due respect, sir, your story sounds rather out of the ordinary -"

Wells pushed past the watch and dropped into the armory-yard. She was holding things up, and if she delayed him any longer there were going to be more dragons who were going to die.

"Hey! You can't do that! You can't!"

He ignored her, and she rang the alarm, which was exactly what he wanted. A dozen recently-awakened Seawings surrounded him a minute later, and it was five minutes afterwards – too long, too long – that the dragon-in-charge of the base came out, a rather small dragon, indicating he was young, almost as youthful as Wells.

"What's going on here?" he asked.

"This crazy here says there's an invasion of Abalone, sir," said the watch, standing in front of Crest and Nonam, who were under guard. Crest shot her a glare that should've melted her into a puddle, but didn't.

"I am Major Shell, in command of Fort Burgeon," said he. A major in control of an entire base. Lucky him, not. "And you are?"

"Sergeant Starfish Wells, Seawing Marines. Abalone's under attack, sir. It's burning and you need to defend this position right now or the attackers are going to kill you with your nightcaps on."

"Release him," said the major, and the soldiers surrounding Wells let go. "I'm taking care of this base while my superior is away, and I'm not about to do anything drastic. I know the fire's there, and I hear something, but… are you sure?"

The major's voice was deep and monotone, droning on and on through urgent topics with only a slight tinge of inflection.

"Sure as sure can be, sir," said Wells through his teeth. The fire was there. It was right damn there, backing up his story, and yet it was so fantastical nobody wanted to believe it.

"They might be having a bonfire, and you're worked up over it," suggested Shell. "All the same, I'll raise a company and see what I can do."

"Sir," said Wells, edging near blatant, court-martial worthy levels of disrespect. "You need the whole complement."

"The entire battalion?"

Oh, this was very much worse than he thought.

"There are only a hundred and fifty soldiers here, sir?"

"Four score and sixteen," said the major. "A third of us are on ocean leave."

Stupid disarmament policies compromising them in their time of greatest need. Ninety-six versus five hundred or a thousand, or more.

"Okay," said the major. "I want a scout flight off C schedule geared up. Move!"

Dragons grabbed their spears beneath them and organized themselves while Shell turned to Wells.

"You never said who the invaders were."

"Wasp-looking-striped-type dragons," said Wells. "They have four wings and tail stingers, and they used some sort of pipe that shot darts. They seem pretty afraid of fire and they die like any other dragon; that's my assessment. They were overconfident and that's how we got out."

"We?"

For the first time the major turned his attention to Crest and Nonam. Nonam waved.

"I'll go back," said Wells. "I'd go back if it meant she – they made it, sir."

"You son of a turtle-slapper," said the major, shaking his head. Crest tossed Wells the bloody comb and Wells held it out in his talon.

"Doesn't smell like Sandwing or Seawing blood to me, sir."

"You should've led with that: I'm convinced," said Shell. He leaned down. "Put the base on alert!"

"Sir, yes sir," said the officer beneath.

"Ssh," said Wells, tilting his ear and letting his jaw hang.

"Excuse me?" said Shell.

"Ssh."

The buzzing sound in the air burgeoned in pitch and volume, and the tired soldiers filing out of the casement to the underground portion of the base fluttered their wings at the ominous feeling settling in their bones, as if a host of yellowjackets had founded a nest at their talons.

"Nonam, got any fire?" asked Wells, and Nonam shook his head no. There was no repeating that trick, not while the Sandwing was out.

A question now forced itself prominently into his mind. Did he stay or did he go? Already he was a coward, leaving the fort like that to go save his love and take care of his life instead of the lives of his Marine brethren. Crest could fend for herself in the debate hall, but who would protect her from the invaders if he died?

He saw Shell, saying something in the ear of Nonam. Wells caught the tail end of the conversation.

"Not faking," said Nonam. So he was confirming the story, though there was little confirmation needed when the black dots buzzing across the distant fields toward them were patently hostile.

"Sergeant Wells," said major Shell, still in that monotone: "You're not required to stay and fight."

Conflicting loyalties wounded his heart. To whom did his service belong? Her Majesty or Crest?

"Sir?"

"Nonam tells me you're not just using her as an excuse to get out. I believe him. You should leave, or the invaders will make the decision for you."

Wells would have stayed if he had no one to care for; his duty was here, fighting the good fight to protect the civilians to the west from rapacious slaughter. But now Crest was at his side, clouding his decision-making by her presence, causing him to second-guess himself, though he knew bumbling hesitation ultimately meant death.

"Get H flight over here, and give them some water and victuals for a three-day journey," said Shell. "We need to warn the Mudwings of the threat."

The four dragons of H glided to the forefront of the ninety-odd dragons below, warming to the gravity of what was about to happen to them. Like Wells, they hesitated when they saw the comrades they'd be leaving behind, feeling somehow that if they remained they would make a difference; that departing was treacherous abandonment.

A lance corporal pressed a fifteen-gallon canteen into his talons, meant to stave off heatstroke during the hot summer days, and a javelin, a small spear for self-defence. Yesterday he had been a lance corporal, and with nowhere near the same amount of responsibility, and today he was a sergeant flying away.

"Enough waiting," he heard someone say in his voice. "Let's move."

And as he and Crest made to leap from the battleworks, he looked back and saw Nonam putting on a combat jacket and clutching a spear. The deserter would stay.

Then they were flying again, heading west and north by west, their pace heightened by the dark shapes flitting about behind them, blurred in the dawn, and a minute later a clash of hardened iron against foreign steel, punctuated by the strange screech of a dying wasp. The four Seawings accompanying them quickened their wingbeats and drew off until they were nothing more than dots on the horizon, leaving him and Crest to rot.

He strove on, the welcome sunlight of dawn morphing into harsh glare that burned his wing even as he sheltered Crest in his shadow from the same. A Seawing needed water to live: he would die if he lost hydration, and it had been twelve hours since he had had a proper drink. Fifteen gallons was not very much for someone who weighed six tons; between himself and Crest it was like ten ounces for a scavenger in the middle of the desert. He moistened his tongue and cut short his desire to drink, passed the well water to Crest and watched her press on.

The brook bottoms left his mouth full of phlegm and tasting like bracken and fish that had been lying on a beach for days on end with the flies keeping it company, and little it did to sate his thirst. They reached another fort in the afternoon, but there was no one there. It was abandoned during Disarmament, and they stayed their course beyond it, though later Wells wished he would've stopped and checked if there was an unchoked spring.

The dry, rolling hills and broken geography flattened now, and on the horizon he saw, further west of him, the wavering green of the humid rainforest, and, north, the rancid marshes. They stretched their wings and soared in place, allowing a moment's respite.

"Should we continue west?" said he, asking for Crest's input. "The Seawings went west."

"Along," said Crest. She was winded, and flagging, but all the same she pointed to the boundary between the rainforest and the marshes. "There's shade."

Further in and deeper from the coast. As far as they knew there were wasps invading every mile of the Bay of Diamonds. There was no rest for the weary, and they both knew that, and descended into the lowlands, moistening their mouths with sips that depleted the canteen ever further.

A speck appeared in the mud flats while they were flying above the sparse trees at the border of the forest, and Wells cautioned Crest to get down into a cove of brush.

The speck resolved itself into a clump of specks, and then into dragons either Skywings or wasps. Wells's stomach boded ill. The dragons landed nearby and spoke among themselves in Common but not Common, as if they were conversing in a tongue warped by the ages from the dialect spoken in Seawing nurseries and Mudwing river homes.

He had to strain his ears to listen.

"- telling you saw somebody - - - the trees make me nerves - - got word from up-high, fight right off the coast and it cost us." The speaker's voice was dry and raspy.

So his warning had made a difference.

"- - dead now? Serves they right. First -" something "is near. Krait getting into our heads - - don't mind the -" Queen? Matriarch? Commander? "but Krait, make me nerves, - - - like that."

What did he mean by getting into their heads? Another spoke.

"We've got some on the islets and the coasts o'er here - - - a night-fort and they crumble - - - wait – told you there was nothin' here. Move on."

Wasp wings buzzed and faded into the distance, but it was a long time before Wells dared stir from his position, sheltered from the torpid heat by the shade of arching, twisting trees. He turned the conversation over in his head, picking at it. Enemies on the coasts? How far north? How far south? Was the western end of the continent affected? Getting into their heads, getting into their heads.

He cast the troubling thoughts into the compartment of his mind reserved for such things, praying it would not burst and drench him in stored misery. Further north they kept, the land steaming warmer rather than cooler, choking mist curling intangibly over the pitches of reeds and rancid backwaters: one dragon's wasteland, another's paradise. The marsh gas made him sick even while flying, out of the worst of it, and the water, unless taken from a river, was unfit for Seawing consumption.

"There's only a sip left in the canteen," said Wells, uncapping it and eyeing the inside.

For a moment they soared at an impasse, each thirsting badly but neither willing to deprive the other.

"I'll – I'll save it then," he said, and lowered it quickly, too quickly. It slipped from his hold and splashed in a muddy pool below, floated for a moment, burbling as swamp water flooded the mouth of it, and slipped beneath the concentric waves of its impact.

Wells descended for it, fishing with his claws in the mud for where it ought to be. Talon-tip met metal, hard in contrast to the yielding muck. He grasped it – rectangular instead of round – and pulled it from the goop.

It was a dog tag, the chain rusted away from years of sitting at the bottom. He wiped away the mess and read the inscription: W L S. He kept it, for it reminded him of his surname, felt for the canteen and found it, filled with gunk that would never fully wash out.

Better than nothing. He beat tired wings and saw, for the first time, a hut standing out against the horizon to the northwest, invisible from the air because of its discreet muddy green color.

"Civilization," he said when he'd caught up with Crest.

He beckoned to the spot and they glided there, landed in the mud with muck-coated hocks. There was no door, and he tapped on the wall instead of knocking. A Mudwing dragoness came to the step, talons brown-white from grinding roots in a mortar and pestle.

"Who are you?"

"Refugees," said Wells, at the same time as Crest said, "Travelers."

The dragoness blinked.

"Welcome to the Mudwing Kingdom," she said. "Are you going to stay on my doorstep or come in?"

"You don't know us and we don't have anything to give you, but we'll come in," said Wells.

And the dragoness shrugged with her wings. "It's a peaceful land. I trust you not to be bandits in my house."

To which Wells gave a nod and Crest sighed.

No cold, wet floor had ever looked so appetizing as this one did now, and yet if they rested here the enemy would catch up. There was still time enough in the day to get farther in and further up the kingdom. They needed to.

So Wells helped himself from the aquifer and cleaned out the canteen – though still it smelled funny, and while he did he let Crest lay down and get a breath. That she'd made it this far was miraculous, and still the world demanded more.

"You folks are sure in a hurry," said their hostess.

Wells shook himself, vainly attempting to smooth away the soreness. "You should be too."

He yawned. Blood rushed past his ears and it rumbled like a sheer current through an underwater gap.

"I admit there's something out there," said the dragoness, taking half a dead lamb from where it hung on a ceiling-hook. "But I shan't be afraid of it. You can't live your life in fear, you know, of this or that. You can have the leftovers, if you're hungry."

Wells nodded, grateful. The two set about eating ravenously while trying not to look like they were starving. It was a futile endeavor.

"This is something to be afraid of," said Wells, after he'd finished the meal. "I would run if I were you."

"I did notice some Seawings earlier today, heading into the rainforest, military types, and they were furtive and concerned," said the dragoness. "And someone flew by the neighbors' place and their family up and went. It's only a few hours' flight to the rainforest for me, and I can swim if I need to. Where are you headed?"

"North to the palace, if we can reach it," said Wells. So the soldiers Major Shell had sent had gotten through. "There's more people that need to hear about it. Moorhen in particular."

Of course the Mudwing kingdom would hold. It had held in the great war through thick and thin, and when had fought the Seawings to a standstill before even that. The collapse of the tribe was unthinkable

Yet they were not prepared…

He sighed.

"We've stayed too long," he said. "I thank you for your hospitality, but we've got to go."

He and Crest filed out of the hut and stretched their wings.

"Take care, you two," said the dragoness.

"Take care," said Wells.

Then he took off and they went on. He looked back every so often, trying to see the brown hut against the brown mud and the dark green pond scum, and for a while he could make it out, till one time he threw a glance over his shoulder and he couldn't see the speck at all.

Each muck flat blended inconspicuously into the next: sometimes they would come across a dirty river or a lake, but these, too, were indistinguishable from each-other. He had reached a point where the weight of each mile no longer added to his burden, where the soreness in his wings was constant, as if he had reached a limit of the old Wells and broken it and gone on.

Time was precious, but the sustenance the Mudwing had given them – odd, that they'd never gotten her name – the food was necessary to keep them going, or they would've run out of energy and died in the muck.

"Another dragon," said Crest, her eyes picking up a dot which Wells had dismissed as a bird. "That's five in the last hour."

Compared to the vast expanse of nothingness they'd gone through after leaving Abalone, this stretch of territory was thickly populated. Wells thought of altering his course to deliver the bad news to the Mudwing, but did not. They flew more north, doing about three leagues an hour. The dragon they'd seen never left their sight: he was coming from left to right, flying almost the same course they were. He landed in a small town of domelike Mudwing homes, one just off their path.

"Should we follow him?" asked Wells. "It's only a few miles off."

Crest shrugged. She would dearly like to stop, but the things she'd seen meant she'd dearly like to go on. Wells nudged her right and they descended into the flat center of the place where the shadows grew long.

The snout of the 'Mudwing' looked back at them from where he was leaning on a fencepost. It was not a Mudwing, it was a Skywing, whose scales looked rather like (and Wells wasn't imagining it) tuna, and whose shoulder bore a starred patch, as if he were one of those sorts who pretended to have importance.

"Hello," said Wells.

"Hello," said the Skywing. "You look hurried for a sergeant."

His eyes glossed over Crest and returned to Wells.

"I am," said Wells. "There's been an invasion in the south."

"That's interesting to hear," said the Skywing. He was deliberately downplaying his concern, for his brows tightened and his eyes grew more introverted, as if thinking. "Someone told me that before, but I thought he was overstating it."

"He wasn't," said Wells. "I killed one."

"That's more than the Mudwing did," said the Skywing. "What did they look like?"

"Wasps," said Wells. "They had four wings and they were striped."

"Four wings?" said the Skywing. "How many talons am I holding up?"

"Two," said Wells. "Where's the palace? North?"

The Skywing shook his head. "You're closer to the Skywing border than you must have thought. This is Little Tree. The palace is south-west of here."

Wells's talons curled. Back?

"Where is the invasion coming from?"

"The coast. Abalone. Thousands of them, at least. The force that took the town was a brigade, at minimum. Probably two."

"How can I believe you?" asked the Skywing.

Wells produced the bloodied brass comb. The Skywing nodded, cupped his wings.

"Wait," said Wells, remembering their Mudwing host. "What is your name?"

"Marshal Eagle," said he. "And I have to fly."

With a beat of his wings the Skywing disappeared, his speed putting Wells's to shame.

"So he was a lot of help," said Wells, as the two watched the Marshal go.

He had been talking to a marshal. At least that was something. And he had seemed to believe them. Wells focused inwards, to the dragon at his side.

"I can't ask you to go on any longer," said Wells. "I'm a military dragon: I have to continue. You, well, you don't."

"Starfish," cautioned Crest. It was one word, but it held great power over him.

"Of course, this is a terrible way to propose," said Wells. "I want you to go inland, as far as you can. Without me."

Stoic and understanding, Crest looked at the ground but kept listening.

"Without the news I bear, this entire kingdom could be lost. I have to give it."

"Where do your loyalties lie?" asked Crest.

"You," said Wells. "No. I don't know."

His strong tail waved at the Mudwing passersby.

"I'll make it out, I promise. Get mail everywhere you can, tell me where you're staying. I'll find it. And when I come back… I'd like you to marry me."

The answer was not easily forthcoming.

Wells produced the ring, still shining bright in a tarnished world.

"Keep it."

But she would not take it.

Night fell and they had nothing to pay for a place, so they went outside the village to sleep. That was the first time Wells ever heard Crest cry. Morning came and he got up and she was already awake, staring forlorn across the land.

"You will come back."

"Guaranteed," said Wells. He pressed the ring onto her middle talon, then found he didn't want to let go.

"There no use standing around, you know, for you shan't get anything done that way," said Crest.

"Goodbye," said Wells.

He took a deep breath, turned and fled.

* * *

**July 2nd, 5,015: Somewhere in the Skywing Kingdom.**

* * *

For Sergeant Byrd, life was bearable because of those cathartic moments. A soldier in his flight had bothered to bring, from a continent more than two thousand miles away, a piece of contraband, a harmonica. Now she produced it in afternoon camp, five miles away from the forty-odd sky dragons holding them up. The flat, silver clouds sublimated and reformed in the air above them, hazy and entangled with the indigo emptiness and the white stars beneath which they floated.

"Give us a tune, Monarda," said private Chervil.

The fanged dragoness obliged. 'Ode to Clearsight' curled through the assembled dragons like a fresh breeze in a stuffy tent. They knew it by heart, whispered the lyrics to the wave-like notes, now rising, now falling, now pirouetting upward and fluttering between chords. Their breaths caught in their windpipes as they tilted their ears and stilled, buoyed by the musical current. It paused, then descended to a memorial pitch, commemorating Clearsight's death.

Byrd let it go on a minute and a minute more, and when the last scale was played in the moonlit clearing he held up his talon.

"Wrap it up," he said. "Thorn has us flying fifteen miles before midnight, so eat your fill."

"Sir, yes sir," they said, and fed themselves.

Scarcely had they taken off from the clearing when Byrd heard the calming regalia of that harmonica, sighing wistfully as a moon broached and the enemy ahead poked at Thorn's flanks, probing them for stragglers in the lines or spread-out formations. The humiliation of the afternoon had strengthened them, and there was no disorganization that night.

"What do you call our red adversaries?" Chervil said, as the 108th flew on, guided by Thorn's navigation officer.

"Soots," rang out a voice. "Cause I'm coated in a talon's breadth of the stuff."

It coughed, and the nickname the dragon had given was infectious.

An hour later and ten miles ahead, a light twinkled into existence ahead of them. Byrd blinked and twisted his neck. Was it a star risen clear of the trees? Was he imagining it? It grew larger in his consciousness, more concrete as they drew nearer.

Quietly now, but not so quietly that his subordinates were unable to hear him, Thorn called the huddle. Byrd and the commander of second company – Stinger – moved to the front.

"Sir," they said when they reached him, visible because of the tiny candle he'd cupped by his chin.

"That light's in a building," said Thorn, his words paced between breaths. "There's glow coming off the walls where it is, see? There's dragons moving in front of them, our adversaries."

"Soots," said Byrd.

Thorn frowned but moved on.

"If so there's at least forty in the area, that we know of. I'm getting a messenger to the two companies adjacent and telling them to group up with us by dawn. Third company goes on the right flank, second on the left. Surround them from the north-east and north-west and attack if you think they're moving. Maintain surprise."

Hivewing doctrine allowed for few questions from subordinate to superior, and Byrd asked none, though there was the pressing problem of staying in touch in the dark, with no visual or audible signals allowed because of the need for stealth.

Mum was the word, and third company quietly passed the information between them. A hush had fallen over them like a thick blanket, muffling their willingness to speak. They flew low along the wooded hills, blending their silhouettes with the tips of the trees, not unlike sticklebacks. It was odd, how little wonder he held when he looked at a tree now as compared with yesterday.

More lights flickered into existence as they went: they were circling a town of decent size for this continent (though nothing near the size of the hives), which was in a cozy stream valley, the south-eastern side, their side, dropping sharply to the stream from a height of about a hundred and fifty feet. The ground was smoother on the other side of the bank, an elevated plateau supporting the town before the land transformed into rolling, wooded hills again.

Byrd now saw that the glow they had first sighted was the glimmer of a tower. The commander of that outfit would rue the day he allowed the fire to be lit.

Third company hunkered down on the side of a ridge and waited, and waited, and waited. Byrd used his telescope to watch the enemy encampment, and guessed the range to be eighteen-hundred yards, or about a mile from the slope of the hill. A Hivewing geared such as he would take two minutes to close that distance, and he crossed his talons and hoped the soots inside were snoozing and not ready to run, or worse (or perhaps better), stand and fight.

Still, the place looked peaceful. If it was peaceful enough the soots might be unalert, and Byrd might score a kill. Two concepts were competing for attention in his head, and the result was mental contortion.

"Something moving on the ridge, sir," said Monarda.

Byrd raised the glass, and his heart pulsed in his chest. The night obscured all color, and what was impossible by day was doable in the dark.

Specks descended the steep, almost cliff-like contours one by one, walking backwards to scale a hill barely climbable by mountain goats, let alone eight-ton dragons like Byrd. They paused, invisible in the evergreen bushes where the hill leveled out and met the stream, then pressed on.

"Friendlies," he said, "Four wings. Thorn's growing impatient."

Shadowed faces all focused on him, more sensed through feeling than sight. Did they follow?

Byrd held up a talon. "Wait."

Black in the moonlight, the waters of the river shone silver where the flanks of the fording Hivewings disturbed them, the waves lapping higher and higher over their bodies until they were submerged up to their necks. The Hivewings swam, then reemerged from the narrow river on the bank, weaponless.

Hundreds of destroyed spears during the trip from Pantala had taught them all about rust.

The leader beckoned towards the hilltops, then hid his dragons in the defilade of a shallow hollow.

"Single file, stay in pairs," said Byrd. "We'll go down quietly. Leave the nonessentials and spears in a cache, bring only the blowpipes."

It was third company's turn to attempt the nervewracking descent. Thorn wanted to get closer while keeping the element of surprise at his chest: Byrd understood that, but he also would've preferred not going down a hill backwards, where if he slipped, there would be little chance of recovery. He hadn't practiced upside-down flying more in cadet school, as he'd pronounced it bunk.

Now he edged past a boulder, hung like a cat from a rock ledge, then let go and plunged the twenty feet to the ground, which was not more than a body-length.

With most of their number on the ground and only a third of them left on the ridge, disaster struck. A private rested his back talons on the boulder and inadvertently dislodged it. The stone rocked, hesitating at the lip which had held it in place for years, then crested it and fell with a crash, the unlucky private not far behind. Those at the bottom waited in breath-held silence.

Silhouettes of dragons appeared at the tower, their undersides rimmed by fire-glow, as if they were standing over a torch. They pointed and shouted.

"Forward!" said Byrd.

The Hivewings surged, streaming away from the group in pairs. It was a better showing than they'd given in the afternoon, but it was still undisciplined and unpracticed, and Byrd was reduced to chasing after, hoping to avail his unit before the engagement progressed from ne'er-do-well beginnings to disaster.

"Altitude, altitude!" he yelled, while dual-winged shapes sprung into the air like bats from a cave.

Hivewings rose belatedly from the ground, but too late.

"Here comes second," he heard someone shout.

Dragons roiled from the hills north-west of the town, with Stinger at their head. They spread out in a crescent and enveloped the confused soots like a cloud of hornets surrounding an unlucky scavenger.

"Moons above," said Chervil, and whistled.

"Quit gandering! Clear out the buildings one by one!" yelled Byrd.

Finally his words had an effect. The dark Hivewings unglued their eyes from the battle overhead and poured into the bases of the two-storied houses.

Byrd saw someone punching and kicking a door, flew closer and saw it was Chervil.

"Move over," said the sergeant.

"Yes sir."

He pushed forward and shoved away the plank locking the gate in place. It was metal-backed, and his tail stung when it smacked into the cold sheet.

Fifty frightened, woolly livestock baaed at him from the corner.

Byrd backed out, showed Chervil the thin plate that would've prevented the success of any physical attack, then let the barn alone.

"Where to?" asked Chervil.

"Follow me," said Byrd.

He knew as little as his subordinate did. The unfamiliar landscape turned him around, and north and south blended into indistinguishable directions. A sloped casement burst open and a dragon flew out, claws outstretched. It hit Chervil and the two tumbled into the dirt, kicking and scratching. Chervil came out on top, claws fumbling at the soot's jaws to keep it from breathing the deadly flame.

Byrd impaled it with his stinger and it went into convulsions, emanating the scent of hot dragon blood. It would be his first kill, but there was no time to contemplate: they raced on in the melee, leaving the soon-to-be dead enemy behind.

Fire roiled in the night, glowing eerily as it flowed like devilment from a Leafwing's cauldron: it lit the position of the soots and let the Hivewings attack them from behind.

Chervil found one such dragon, facing down two friendlies with sparks effervescing from its maw. He clawed at its flanks with his left talon, weak, and the enemy whirled and released a well-aimed jet. Chervil beat his wings back, wobbled, and rolled in the earth. The flames rolled towards Byrd and he ducked them, though the sudden heat seared his scales. Then the two Hivewings came up from behind and finished off the soot.

Byrd turned Chervil over, wrote off the young soldier and turned away, then felt a claw pull at his tail.

"I'm good sir," said the private. For the first time Byrd noticed the blood flowing copiously from the private's wing. "Just a little worse for wear."

"Hang in there," said Byrd.

He thanked the dark for hiding the true extent of Chervil's injuries, even from Chervil.

The fighting had died down now, the worst of it anyway.

"Can you move?"

Chervil shook his head.

"Do you feel light?"

"No sir."

"I'm going to get you out of the way," said Byrd.

He propped up the private on a shed in a vegetable garden.

"Try not to stir too much," he said, then departed to see after the rest of his soldiers.

Delay and hesitance had boiled away, and the residue was that of victory. Though there were more casualties lying by the wayside as he flitted about the scene of battle, the Hivewings had won, and they knew it.

"The ultimate taboo," muttered Byrd. He galloped past Monarda and came to the spot of the stabbed soot.

It was gone: his definite kill had turned into a probable.

He poisoned it – it died before he could get a look at its eyes, or crawled away and was dying now. The efficacy of Hivewing venom was unquestionable. It was disappointment he was feeling now, not a vague sense of hope that the soot had gotten away. His head crushed the underdog in his heart: like an underdog, his heart just kept coming back.

"Get me a status report of everyone in the company," said Byrd. "I want the group encamped around -" he searched for a place, "that building. And get a flight to go help that fallen private and retrieve the equipment we left on the ridgetop."

Byrd looked sideways at Stinger, who was standing near enough to look like he wasn't listening but close enough to employ his ears and hear what was being said. Stinger was wishing he had claimed that building, the red one that towered two stories above everything else here, with a solid foundation and a cellar too, what with the hanging Z illustration indicating it was some kind of inn.

Byrd stepped toward the fellow sergeant.

"Any casualties?" he asked Stinger, easing the perceived slight.

"Few," said Stinger. "We're prepared for another successful surprise attack, if that's what's required of us. You?"

He emphasized 'successful'.

"Less than expected," said Byrd, and nothing more.

Suddenly he remembered Chervil, and how third company had paid its dues in blood. There was nothing irreparable in the private's injury given time and luck, but the rapid course of the battalion's advance made time scarce, and luck was as loyal as the changing breezes.

"Give me a moment," he said, and glanced to a buck private who'd just flown up to him and was waiting, patiently, for a lull in his superiors' conversation. "There's a casualty by a garden shed about two dwellings west of here. Administer medical attention as needed."

"Yes sir, sir," said the private, and, in the time when Byrd expected him to leave: "Permission to speak, sir?"

Byrd bit his lip. "Granted."

"We've encountered civilians in the cellar of the red building."

Now the lack of someone to distribute his orders was rankling him.

"I'll take care of it," he said. "Dismissed."

Now he buzzed his wings and went towards the tower. It was standing on the crest of a shallow incline, which made it stand farther above the river than its height warranted alone. It was circular at the base, made of red cuboids that smelled of clay and fire, cemented by brownish-grey mortar. A shelf of the material bulged from the side facing the river and ran downwards along the slope for a little ways before it was subsumed into the earth.

This, presumably, was the cellar, like the cellars of the Hives, though probably not used for water storage like the underground cisterns of his home.

Byrd found the ground-level entrance. There was a second one shadowed against the stars above him, a balcony of sorts, if it could be called that without the balusters. It was too far away from his destination to be of much use.

He ducked inside through the swinging doors: it was pitch-dark on this level, and though his group had been carrying torches when they arrived they had set them and the flints aside before crossing the river. The opening pointed southwards, away from all but the dimmest of the three moons, and his night vision had been ruined by the hot flames of the soots, so that outlines were little more than a blur. The only light came from the downstairs, and it was obstructed by Monarda, whose head poked out of the floor casement that led below, fangs exposed by the grin brought on by their quick victory.

Dragonets wailed and she frowned, then ducked to the side for Byrd to pass.

"Careful as you go down again," he said to the dragoness, remembering the unlucky private. "And start a light by the flints when the flints arrive from across the water."

Then he descended carefully: the cellar was too small for flying antics, which was the reason for the steps, and though the slope of the stairs was bearable, he did not wish to fall. There was a false landing and a corner, and once he'd turned the corner he could look left from a place roughly equivalent in height to the ceiling and see the contents of this place.

Aromatic barrels lined the outer walls, and on the dirt floor stood, crouched, and lay the most diverse collection of dragons Byrd had ever seen: small ones with shining coats; old codgers with rusty scales; young dragons of half a dozen different colors leveling their chins at him with resentment. The young dragons had fire in them: they were unafraid to do what they believed to be right, and the combination of virility and lack of consideration for consequences made a dangerous mix.

They all looked at him like he was in the wrong.

There was fear there, but also anger, and if unaddressed their anger would metamorphose into hate. The braver dragonets glanced at him with undisguised wonder: the more timid ones cowered behind their mothers.

In a melting pot of epic proportions, Byrd cleared his throat.

"Stay here," he began. "Accommodations will be made for you. Things will get better."

How much of that had gotten through was impossible to tell. Their eyes bored into him with an intensity difficult to imagine, and they silently contradicted his presumption that what he was telling them was right.

He bowed as an excuse, then did an about-face in the cramped stairwell and headed to the main room, where a light had been struck and there was decent visibility at last. The upstairs was not connected to here by stairs, as the basement was: instead there was an ovular, smooth-rimmed opening in the center of the ceiling that led to a second story perch. It was nice to see architecture like that, especially when his neck was stiff from bending down to clear the overhead.

"Where is Thorn?" he asked.

"Scouting the town for more civilians, sir," said Monarda. There were more dragons in the room than her now: two dozen crowding the entrance and monkeying around with things when they thought he wasn't looking, and a dozen more peering over the upstairs opening and getting very little work done.

"Go ask him what our orders are on civvies," said Byrd. The dragoness pushed her way through the standing privates and took off. Byrd looked at the rest of them, then realized that the flight had brought back the equipment since there was a light lit.

"Situation report," he said, putting force into the order.

The downstairs had made him irritable.

"We are one KIA and one other casualty for the engagement, sir," said the dragon in charge of the flight who'd gone out, a flight-com, and those were usually not worth much. "The dragon who fell died and we have two others with burns, including one with substantial heat damage and a substantial blood wound."

That must be Chervil.

"A regrettable loss," said Byrd.

"Furthermore, some of the equipment was knocked into the river when the boulder crashed: however, I was able to rescue most of it and wipe the water off, to prevent rust."

Smart dragon.

"The severely injured dragon has been bandaged and I had him moved into the upstairs to keep him out of the wind."

"Good work," said Byrd.

Competence was what he needed to remind him of the military spirit. He thought a moment.

"Get some water to clean out the cut."

"Of course, sir."

The dragon hurried away.

Byrd flew to the second floor and landed by the prostrate form of Chervil, looked east from the balcony acrosst the misty hills, now grey with the onset of the sleepy glow which precedes the rising sun, and saw fourth and sixth companies tardily flying towards him.

Chervil murmured.

"Looks like somebody's late to the party."

* * *

**Many thanks to LiterallyHasNoIdeasForAnOKName, who much of this chapter was written for. He has Wings of Fire stories published under the same name, and I highly recommend them.**

**Author's Note:**

**And so Wells and Crest separate at last. I wanted more time to develop the relationship, but I also needed to emphasize the urgency of time ****and what was happening to the continent just in a couple of days. The world depends on how fast that message can get over the mountains, and it was a defining character moment for Wells that he had to choose. ****Will they get back together? That depends on how much you guys want them to.**

**Moving on: as**** a guy who knows enough about military affairs, tactics and strategy to be annoyed at most stories tha****t hint at war but don't depict it well at all (the original five books, some fanfiction I've seen in various archives), ****I've tried to represent what I believe the military would be li****ke ****in the Pyrrhian universe.**

**Tell me what you thought of this chapter: I do want to hear it, and sometimes new ideas go into the story when taken from reviews.**

**And speaking of which, the OC ****(I do not guarantee all aspects of the character to remain)****:**

**If you've got a Skywing, Hivewing, Leafwing, Rainwing or Mudwing, this one's for you.**

**Cheers, and have a good day, fair skies and fair**** reading.**

**Signed, Black.**


	5. Contact - The Dirt

**Contact – The Dirt.**

* * *

**Morning,** **July 3****rd****, 5,015: Somewhere in the Skywing Kingdom.**

"First company is departing on the hour," said Thorn. "I'm splitting the battalion."

Having decided that keeping the civilians in the basements of Smolderfax was preferable to letting them have the run of the outside, at least until the rear guard came up and they had their wings clipped, sergeants and Lieutenant were standing just outside the red building where most of 3rd Company had made camp. Birds chirped from the green trees, and though at first their songs had been novel, Byrd's interest quickly faded until the chatter seemed constant, purposeless and insipid, though his name was pronounced much like that of the creatures.

But first company? Departing?

"Our orders are to divide every time we create an open flank," clarified Thorn.

Certain things said an officer liked an order about as much as his subordinate did, and Thorn's flared nostrils were one of them. Until reinforcements arrived – and with their ravenous consumption of supply they might take another day and a half to reach Smolderfax, let alone wherever the 108th had got to – the brigade was forced to fend for themselves with a blunt stick instead of the sharpened spear they were meant to be.

Stinger looked sidelong at Byrd with one eye and Byrd tried to look straight ahead, but failed.

"Keep to the respective commands of your units, and good luck," said Thorn, and the Hivewing lieutenant took off and buzzed away towards the company he directly led.

"Who's managing both companies, then?" asked Stinger.

Until the new communication method was accepted by second cohort, orders were only as fast as the dragons that carried them. And as they both knew now, Hivewings were slow.

"I have no idea," said Byrd. "Whoever gets promoted."

Stinger nodded.

There was no particular reason for Byrd to crave advancement – if he was lieutenant, who would manage the guys at the company and wing levels? Not somebody as competent as he was. But as the two shook talons and went their separate ways, the male competitiveness in his blood took over and said that if anybody was going to be in command, it'd be him.

They went their separate ways. Stinger could be a case study for where he'd end up if he did or didn't do certain things: did take charge of second and third companies or didn't.

But this was the now, and there were still those pesky prisoners to deal with. Byrd headed to the tower, walking this time, for his wings deserved a rest.

A singular sepia nose peered from behind the door of the barn Byrd had burst into last night, retreated and showed itself again. He would not have seen if he was flying, and there was a small chance even on the ground but that the motion attracted his peripheral attention. He stilled himself in a ruined garden, flanks hidden by reefs of tomatoes. He was as stealthy as a silhouetted zebra, but he was at an oblique angle to the door, and that was enough.

A young, light brown dragon stalked from the door, chocolate-colored wingtips tucked close to coffee scales, yet quivering with excitement. The 'dirtwing', or whatever it was that they called themselves, was obviously trying to escape into the countryside, where a full occupation might never find him. Byrd could let him go: there was little harm being done.

But keeping him here would grant him the protection of the empire… as well as obligation to life-long service and bondage to his descendants.

It didn't work like that, did it?

Byrd trotted from behind his dubious concealment and laid a talon on the dragon's shoulder. The dragon whirled at the touch, beating stubby wings to gain separation. Byrd would not let it.

"Come on," he said, nodding at the tower. "We're going back."

The dragon glared at him from eyes set in defiance.

"No."

"You are coming with me."

"No."

"And what if you don't? We'll find you sometime."

The dragon wrinkled his snout: there was much of the Pantalan dialect he must not understand.

"Why?"

"For the good of the empire and you," said Byrd.

"You believe it?" said the young 'Mudwing.'

"Is it important – of large meaning – that I do?"

Whether or not the full meaning of his statement was interpreted was up to how Byrd said it. Pyrrhians spoke funny: they took their time about talking and let their voices settle to their natural pitch instead of artificially raising or lowering them according to their station.

"Good of the empire means good of your leader," said the Mudwing. "And you?"

"You're wasting my time."

Byrd shied away from the questioning prisoner. The words of the dragon fertilized the discord between his head, his head, and his gut. All the same, he shook his head. That guy couldn't be right.

The flat plaza on which they'd rounded up the populace was adjacent to the red, two-story building on the hill where third company kept house. Byrd flew up to it now, landed between the balusters on the second floor and strode in with his wings folded so they nested on his back.

Monarda was fanged instead of a stinger dragon, and he knew the soldier by the way her harmonica hung from her throat on a chain. Now she was giving him an odd, insubordinate stare, as if suddenly she had skipped two ranks and was a first sergeant over him, or a colonel.

"First cohort's a hundred miles away," she said, and then her snout wrinkled, confused at what it'd just done.

The new way of doing things unsettled him when he was still at the driver's seat. Byrd glanced at the injured Chervil, then flew down as quickly as he had come, going to the outskirts of the town where he knew Stinger was, running his talon along the wood – wood! - cattleguides as he went.

Cows. A fantasy built from an off-talon mention by Clearsight. The real things were mundane. But that reminded him: the brigade's rations were running low. His ration pouch flapped on his side, weighed down by half a bar of alcohol refuse, plantstuffs, and a tenth portion of meat.

His company foraged whenever possible.

Stinger was on the green, first on the common, fourth wing twitching with the biting gnats that thirsted to feed on dragonflesh.

"Chervil's side is still bad, and one in the company dead from the start, plus a couple more casualties from fighting those soots on our second day in. One of my dragons is getting an infection every day of the week," said Byrd. "D'you think soot staff sergeants have second in commands?"

Without a second in command, the only dragons he could discuss things with were his superiors and his peers, and it was taboo to disturb a dragon higher-up on station over a matter easily argued a triviality.

Stinger shrugged. "We're needing some reinforcements soon."

"I got news by way of the speak," said Byrd. He swore, sometimes the higher-ups used their power not for best efficiency, but for the scare factor. "The body of First Cohort's only a hundred miles away now."

Two days' travel. Anything could happen in that time.

"The soots multiply," said Stinger.

Byrd raised his monocular scope once more. Far-off was the peak of a tall mountain, studded with dragon-made crenelations blended into the rock and yet red at the tips, as if some Maker had reached down and bejeweled the summit with a crimson crown.

"Wasp wants us to take that on our lonesome," said Byrd. A heavy sigh escaped him, the sigh of one who has completed a lengthy task and is then given a longer, more difficult one.

108th Brigade all the way. If he continued on, perhaps these plaguing doubts would be left behind, drowned in the blood of war.

"Stinger?" he asked. "What do you feel about all this?"

"More power to Wasp," said Stinger, and shrugged. The statement was genuine. He believed his words. "There's some soots up on the hill, and the easiest way to pass is in the valley of those slopes."

Thorn was elsewhere on the front, and so they had to form their own battle plan. Without the presence of the absolute command, authority easily diminished to bickering sergeants.

"I'll bring up third company," said Byrd. "That spot at the base of the hills is a good rendezvous point."

He checked the sky.

"Ready in five minutes and there in a quarter of an hour," he said.

"Same," said Stinger. They saluted each other, then returned to their respective sectors of the town.

Byrd retreated to his dragons, encamped in the red building and overlooking the listless, inertial river. How these Pyrrhians could afford to dedicate so much space to one establishment. It made him think, though he tried not to, because it brought the uncomfortable stinging in his gut. Again he banished the feeling. The alive dragons of third company were on ground level: Monarda, ladling cleaning alcohol spirits from a barrel into a pail of water, and Chervil, cleaning his side with it.

"River water?" asked Byrd, raising his voice so it would reach down.

"Yessir," said Chervil, flashing a grin of verve and energy, despite his constant discomfort.

"It looks unclean," said Byrd.

A cloud of murk twisted at the bottom of the pail, an odd sight for someone used to the clear collected rainwater and dew that served the hives.

"It's fine," said Chervil. "I'll be ready by afternoon, s'arnt."

"We're pushing on in a minute," said Byrd. "Everyone that can in second and third Wing, get your spears. First wing gets left behind here to watch the town. Stinger and I are going up the hills and into the forest – we'll blow the horn if we need you.

Chervil impugned his usually vivacious demeanor, said: "The invasion was gonna be a piece of pastry: yeah right."

Nobody had ever earned anything without taking some risk and doing something, thought Byrd. While he was fighting, the question of whom he was risking his life for should not bother him.

The young private looked beyond the suspended dais. "There goes first company! Wonder what they're doin'."

"Leaving," said Byrd. "Covering our flanks."

"Aw," said Chervil.

It was a majestic sight; forty-eight dragons rising into the air northwards, rolling, and departing west. They passed over Byrd's position like a river of bees, and ere long were flying a dozen yards over the river, so elegant they (almost) made Byrd forget he had a rendezvous to make.

"Rations," he said.

"Yes sir," said the dragons of the Wings, putting less hoopla into the words than they had while coming onshore, three days ago at the start of this.

"Combat pouches?"

"Yes sir."

"Spears, blowpipes?"

They nodded assent.

"On my lead for takeoff," said Byrd. Twenty strong dragons leaped from the ledge, wings overlapping each-other to catch upwash of their brethren's beats. They reached a speed of eighteen knots seven seconds after their jump, and from then to the rendezvous point, a mile and a half away, was about five minutes.

Stinger's force arrived a minute later, to their chagrin and Byrd's satisfaction. The two staff sergeants got to work planning for the almost inevitable engagement.

"Those soots up there have increased their numbers," said Stinger. "I see forty camping in the open, undisciplined scum."

So this was a different group than they'd been driving back these last few days. Those dragons were disciplined, hardy and fierce. These guys had no idea what they were doing. The threat of an enemy numerical advantage no longer seemed so intimidating. Byrd put his eye to the scope.

"Look, another ten trooping out of the woods."

The soots were standing on the brim of the hill, making faces and jeering. The critical difference in the calculus was that the attacking force needed three to one odds to take a position. If they had Thorn and his company, and one of the six other companies in the brigade around besides that, they would have that advantage.

"Too bad we're spread out along a hundred miles of front," said Byrd.

"Third company, get some altitude!" he shouted out loud, and then professed, in a quieter voice: "I don't like coming up the hill against those polearms."

The battle began as these battles usually did; with the soots on top and the Hivewings beneath, at a slight disadvantage. Byrd knew what that was before it came into play.

Blowdarts whistled upwards from Stinger's ranged Wing as the soot commander whirled overhead, and Byrd's dragons followed with potshots of their own. The lethal projectiles gained five hundred feet, hung in the air, visible for the blink of an eye, then came down again. One punched a hole through one of Byrd's left wings.

"Cease fire!" he ordered, but sporadic volleys continued for a minute after until the word reached everybody.

Damn if it was creepy, but that communication of thoughts would've been useful in this sort of situation. While the orders were going out there was little Byrd could do but observe. He liked what he saw.

A smart soot commander would've used his speed and his altitude to play the delaying game. This one was overeager, ruled by his subordinates, who probably wished to give the invaders a taste of their own medicine. Soots descended and started going one on one with the Hivewings. Rookies they might be, but dragons like Monarda would give better than they got from these greenhorns.

Two came for Byrd directly, and he matched spears with one, kept the other at length with his stinger while he gave ground out of necessity. The first one swung his poleaxe wide for a slice, and Byrd reversed direction with a flick of his wings. The heavy axehead of the soot's weapon had too much momentum to swing back before Byrd stabbed the soot in the chest, and it dropped, unused, to the ground below.

The other hesitated at the fate of its ally, then pressed on while Byrd's spear was embedded in the still-kicking soot. The poleaxe darted forward and sliced into Byrd's scales, yet lacked the energy or direction to go deep; a quick jab knocked the polearm upward, and Byrd finished the soot with his poisonous tail, then wrung out his fist.

His knuckles hurt like hell.

His situational awareness had decreased to that of a dragon looking through a tunnel. Instead of chasing the enemy in front of him, which would've gotten him killed, Byrd realized his blindness and hovered, taking stock of his surroundings. Soots tumbled from above, dead and dying, paralyzed by the invisible blowdart killers. Hivewings fell, too, less of them, but it was a bad trade.

Byrd yelled the regroup, for nothing: the fighting continued as it had. The company was embroiled in the mad furball, and the only means of reforming was ending the fight. A horn blew, Stinger's horn. Dragons rose from the captured town of Smolderfax and hastened to Byrd's aid, and the soots, now with the weights against them, fought on and retreated at the last moment. Not all of them.

Monarda seized one of those who had failed to retreat, bit the unfortunate soldier and kicked him away. Even if he survived the poison, the fall would kill him for sure.

"Glad for the reinforcements," said Byrd, looking over the first Wing.

Among those who'd come to help was Chervil. He dipped and bobbed in flight, staying his course by willpower and a lack of wind. The gash in the subordinate's upper side was angry, glistening with yellowish pus and bubbled underscale.

"Chervil! Go back to town," said Byrd.

The dragon made that pained smile. "Yessir," he said, turned and hissed, exposing fanged teeth.

Byrd looked at his own bleeding chest. This cut would be treated with water from a clear brook or from the center of a running river.

He needed a second in command, but the Hivewing system didn't allow for that. The leader was in absolute control at the company level, and he didn't want to break with tradition just yet. Officers were set apart from their enlisted. Instead he said to the nearby dragons of the company, "Ensure no more water comes from near the river banks."

And they nodded assent.

Byrd took off his supply pouch, checked how many ration bars there were. As long as they were dry they would keep, and they were the mainstay of the army's food supply at the moment, but that fact alone couldn't change the terrible, insect-like taste of the world's worst victuals, of which there were only enough to fit in his talon; no more. Three a day, four in combat, which was every day – that was two and a half days, three if he rationed them. And recon companies didn't have subunits dedicated to bringing along the essentials which made a functioning military possible.

The decision was easy.

"That barn there, in the middle of the village," he called out. "Go get the livestock in there and divvy them up for consumption. And get a fire lit just outside the building. I want some light here."

"Yes sir," said the soldiers, and they ran along.

It was time to test the local morsels; never mind that the animals once belonged to the dragons currently imprisoned in that cellar. The conquered loot of this village was rightfully Hivewing. Had they had a cauldron he would've ordered a stew made from clean river water, for soup went longer than meat alone in dragon's bellies. But he did not, and he could not, and instead assisted in prying the barn door from the jamb, and slaughtering the woolly livestock inside.

It was a gruesome business, but the smells made his mouth water; he was a dragon, and the last sergeant ever to be accused of squeamishness about animal blood. They snapped the thin necks, then withdrew from the barn and ate in the red building. The locals peered from the basement with their jaws set and their eyes gimlets, glittering in the flickering firelight from just beyond the door, but third company paid them no heed.

"Throw me up one," said Chervil. Somehow he had moved himself to the rim of the oval opening in the roof, and was licking his chops at the feast. Someone tossed him some food and he caught it with a hiss of pain, then bit into it.

"It's good stuff sir, try some."

Byrd looked around, ensured that everybody else had a morsel before he began to eat.

The taste of mutton was simultaneously the oddest, richest, and most filling thing Byrd had ever eaten. The hives did not have red meat: they had insects or rodents or fish bred in cisterns to furnish food and fertilization for the crops that grew on and about every hive and its subsidiary outbuildings. The cultivated stuff tasted bland even with salt: this stuff had spice without seasoning. Byrd liked it, and as he surveyed the raised eyebrows and consumed servings of his company he realized the others did as well.

Monarda left, probably conducting her privy, and Byrd noted her departure without paying much attention to it.

"Hey sir, my canteen broke."

Byrd looked left and saw the flight commander from yesterday holding up a silver metal canister with a yawning crack in the bottom. The soldier's scales were orange and grey instead of orange and black, and instead of criss-crossing his torso in solid lines like most Hivewings' stripes did, his split at the midline so the effect was more like crosshatching.

"How'd you do that?" asked Byrd. "You were the flight commander from yesterday, right?"

"Yes, Bolt. I was uh, testing some of the tools I found and I was, well, I wanted to know whether the awls over here are as good as the awls back home so I -"

"You punched a hole in it," said Byrd. "In steel."

"Yes sir."

"We don't have a replacement for that," said Byrd, his heart sinking.

He couldn't do very much about that, now could he? If this was a base he could relegate Bolt to some unpleasant job that Silkwings usually did, but he was on the front, in a war, where every soldier was essential. And since they didn't have a Silkwing along, they couldn't patch the bottom of that jug.

"No more food tonight," said Byrd. "Go find some clay if you can, and try to patch it up with that and heat. And think before you act!"

Younger dragons and their follies. It should've been obvious that hitting the only canteen Bolt had with an awl was a bad idea, but for some reason Bolt had gone and done it, the kid. It was only yesterday that he'd seemed somewhat competent, and now this.

Byrd would have to teach him to reason beyond his actions and forward to the consequences; else Bolt would stumble through life like a short-sighted dragon, always aware there was something off but never mustering the will to ask for glasses.

Monarda slipped back through the door.

"Give us a tune!" said Chervil, and Monarda nodded, but went to wipe off her talons in the grass. Before she took up the harmonica she made a pronouncement to Byrd.

"Caught some civvy dragonet trying to escape, sir," said Monarda. "Chocolate and sepia was what he was, and pretty small."

"What did you do with him?" asked Byrd.

"I killed him."

"Ah."

If the other dragons of third company heard this, they put little thought into it; other tribes were chattel, hardly of the dragon species. Killing one in cold blood was not murder.

There was something wrong with that viewpoint, wasn't there? The dragonet had seemed intelligent, language barrier though there might have been. He had ambitions, friends, a livelihood. The dreams of a sheltered upbringing would never be realized, because now he was dead.

The music began and went on, but Byrd stood in the corner and watched the company he'd come to think of as his children, and did not hearken to the tune. There was an awareness that had come over him that Monarda was a killer; it made him uncomfortable to be around her, and even more fidgety to think that he too was a killer, a murderer of soot kids who hardly knew what they were doing.

It was going to be a long night.

He needed to do something, anything.

"Put up a watch," said Byrd.

"Sir, yes sir," they said, and then each said 'not me' until the last eight to speak groaned and went out to keep station.

The order served to distract his mind and his heart. Already he was thinking of other matters. Should they douse the fire? It would make his position harder to find, harder to exploit – but the soots already knew he was here, and it served to brighten the soldier's spirits. Byrd decided it could stay.

In the meantime, he needed to get some shuteye. Sleep, however, would not come. His vision would fade and his body would still, but it was a conscious thought that stilled him. At long last he fell to unconsciousness, but realized he had because he woke up, some time later, with the night growing old and the flames burned down to embers.

Faintly he heard two dragons talking.

"I was going to be a construction overseer," said a voice. Bolt? No. A moment's thought revealed it as Chervil's. "But I saw an army poster back in fourteen and thought I'd join up for easy living and nice pay. Instead I got to build character on another continent."

"It's an adventure."

A dragoness. Monarda. Byrd had half-made his mind up to call out and end the hocus-pocus before it got intimate, but they went on and he decided to hold his tongue and learn something about the dragons in his command.

"I didn't join up; I was inducted on my birthday. I didn't have a career path planned out and my teachers knew it, so the military took me."

"When's your birthday?" asked Chervil.

"The end of August."

That explained it. Monarda was a military dragonet. They probably got her at seven. August, August. The month was only three and a half weeks from now, and her birthday four more.

"Think Byrd's awake?" asked Chervil.

"Probably not," said Monarda. "But we should be quiet. I don't want to wake him up and make him mad, and we ought to be keeping an eye out, even if we aren't on watch."

"No, no, it's fine. He's probably sleeping like the dead. What do you think of our sarge?"

"Knows his stuff; does what you can expect from an officer and keeps his head. But him and Stinger, there's going to be sparks, and nothing to do about their rivalry but stand back and work around it."

And what if Monarda's intuition was right?

"Yeah. But… it was too damn bad we lost that guy to a falling rock; what a stupid way to go. I wonder if there was anything I could've done to change it."

"Don't think about it," said the dragoness. "If you do you'll destroy yourself by regretting too much."

Good advice, but how to use it? Byrd felt he would take a long time to master the trick.

"And we should be getting to sleep. Good night."

"Night."

And when the dragons' chattering stopped, Byrd got some shuteye with them.

**Afternoon, July 3****rd****, 5,015: The Mudwing Palace.**

His goal was the righteous one: his tidings were true. But as Wells looked up, and up, and up, and stretched his neck a little more so his eyes could see the peak of the spire, the forthright nature of what he bore foundered. This place was built for prestige, to attract the respect of the powerful people who visited this kingdom, and to awe into obedience the little dragon with more power than he thought he had. There was no guarantee they would listen to Wells the marine sergeant, a title that'd been so powerful just a few days ago but now was an empty promise.

But the wasps would be here in a day, if not hours. It was his duty to give these guys a chance.

Such as the guard who'd been stonewalling him for half a damn hour at the gate of this place, beneath the marble statues of the war heroes.

Every war hero was as afraid as Wells at one point in their lives: they'd just learned to overcome that fear, and rely on it to tell them of trouble once they'd mastered its cowardly impulses.

"I'm sorry, sir, but I'm not allowed to let you come inside and disrupt the orderly goings-on of the palace. The Queen doesn't have time for that," said the sentry, a sturdy, boneheaded sort with a chestplate of iron, but no spear in sight.

Wells possessed nothing if he didn't have perseverance.

"What about one of her advisers, then?"

"No."

"You have to understand," said Wells, the matter already having been made clear.

"I do understand," said the guard. "Do you have any family around that could take care of you? We do have a lot of heatstroke in Seawings at this time of year."

"What's all the fuss?" came a voice, mediated in its pacing, even in its tone and so infinitely more powerful.

The guard turned to the gates. A dragon had glided down from the sepia entrance hall and was standing just behind Wells and the sentry, whom Wells now called Lughead.

"Nothing, sir. Just another doom-and-gloomer come to ruin our day."

The dragon (who wore the patch of colonel on his fore-shoulder) raised the scale above his eyes so it morphed into an eyebrow. This one was more slender than Lughead, but his build served to emphasize the muscles he had rather than draw attention away from them. His brown eyes moved slowly about the place from behind an aquiline nose, inhaling every detail, and his dark scales were edged with a shadow of gray, an indicator of age.

"Your doom-and-gloomer holds the rank of sergeant," said the colonel. "Perhaps he has something interesting to say to Moorhen's head of defense. We're a rather small department, but we still have power."

A chance! Wells had better not waste it: if he gave a bad first impression all was lost, and they would hear with their ears but never listen. His tongue stuck to the top of his mouth while he thought of the words.

"My kingdom is dealing with an invasion," he said. "Have you heard of any reports like this before?"

The colonel shook his head no.

If Wells made them believe, he could tell them about the true scope of the problem later. Saying everything like once would make him seem a madman.

"Abalone was sacked the night before yesterday," said Wells. "The coastal town."

"By what? Skywings?"

"If they were Skywings they were disguised excellently," said Wells. "They appeared to have four wings, but they died like anything else. They burned the town and only a few people got out. They're up to the rainforest already, and they'll be here tomorrow if not in a few hours."

The colonel drew himself up, as if about to pass judgement.

"Your statement is hard to believe," he said, "but we'll look into it. You do not want to know what will happen to you if you're telling a lie, trust me."

Wells nodded.

"Oh, I wish I was."

The colonel looked at him expectantly, as if administering a test for falsehood. Evidently he passed the exam, for the Mudwing turned and said "Follow me."

Wells did, but already there was a sinking feeling in his guts; the soldiers here were too few and too disorganized to mount resistance against a foreign invader. Trusting that the other tribes would hold to a peace deal, Moorhen must have discarded her arms and armies. Dragons did not need weapons to fight, but boy, it made war a helluva lot easier.

The hall in which he strode had white walls with symmetrical blue diamond designs painted onto them, each with teal and cerulean centers and wreaths of lazuli playing between the contours of floor was composed of marble slabs, excellently cut and fitted together by competent masons. It was meant to make its visitors think the Mudwings were a tribe of wealth, a tribe that'd risen above the squalor by which its neighbors defined it and become cleanly, tidy and neat. All it invoked in Wells was a sense of doom and impending loss.

But he was being taken seriously, at least for now.

"How soon will your invaders be here?" asked the colonel, eagle-like nose pointed straight at Wells.

"Maybe tomorrow, maybe in an hour," he said.

"We would've heard something."

"They outpace news of their advance. You don't believe me?"

The colonel sighed.

"While it's possible there's a danger, I don't think so. I moved you away from the gate because you were causing a ruckus, not because I thought your tale was true. We have a room in one of the lower towers where you can get some water and rest yourself, uhh."

"Wells."

What a fool he was, and how badly his sense of duty had impinged upon his judgment, all for naught. Now he had left Crest behind, and had no way of discerning where she was save the accounts of dragons she'd left in her wake, while in the meantime the enemy got nearer and nearer to sweeping the Mudwing Kingdom clean. He was a damn, damn fool.

"At least give me a room with a window," said Wells. "At least do that for me."

"That we can do," said the colonel.

Wells sighed. "There's nobody you can mobilize, no force you can put on alert?"

"It's not worth it."

"It is. If you can buy thirty minutes of time…"

"I'm sorry, but no."

At that Wells's protests grew feebler and feebler as time went on. They gave him some food to eat, and when they put him in the room with the gabled window looking west, with the sun shining in through the thin bars which supported the yellow-purple glass panes depicting Lotho killing the sea serpent, his exhaustion overcame him and he fell asleep.

**Early Morning, July ****4****th****, 5,015: The ****Skywing**** Palace.**

Alone in the old Skywing war tower, Eagle examined the last despatch. Orders had been sent gathering up the general staff, but at the moment Eagle was marshal, logistician and strategist rolled into one. Overwork led to exhaustion; exhaustion led to mistakes. Mistakes led to Skywings dying for nothing.

Smolderfax was gone, lost in the morning. Only three more towns lay between that and the palace, and the militia garrisoning the countryside was simply not enough.

It was time to start thinking about the unthinkable. If things went on like this the Skywing palace would fall in two, maybe three days: fighting harder could extend that period, but not by much, and it would spend dragons better used later on in this conflict. Regulars, too, were few and far between. He had two orders, or about eight thousand dragons on the western border, guarding against the Icewings in case they tried to make trouble, but rotating them here would take three days, and deprive those regiments of much-needed supply. Brigades were being assembled here and there, but they too lacked victuals and replacements for attrition.

They didn't know who they were fighting, and that was a problem in itself.

If the palace was cut off from the Kingdom's body – and soon it very well might be – the newly formed pocket would be unable to sustain itself for more than a month, at best. He needed to work with the advantages he had and buy time for the superior Skywing war machine to assert itself.

Disarmament had hit them hard.

Firstly, he needed to ensure Skywing resources remained in Skywing talons. Secondly, he needed to preserve the population and its military. Thirdly, he must avoid expending units in futile engagements they could not win. To these ends he drew up three unequivocal documents with historical implications. The first's name was General Order 1052 (A).

_ALL ABLE DRAGONS BETWEEN 5 AND 9 ORDERED TO TRANSPORT ALL ESSENTIAL MATERIALS BEHIND NEWLY CREATED FIRST MOUNTAIN LINE (FMT). SEE SEC 2 FOR DETAILS._

_DRAGONS OLDER THAN 10 REQUIRED TO ENLIST OR BEGIN PRODUCTION OF WAR MATERIEL, UNLESS OLDER THAN 35. ELDERS WILL BE EMPLOYED AS INSTRUCTORS, MANAGERS, AND OTHER NON-COMBAT DUTIES. ENEMIES DEFINED IN SEC 3._

_GOOD LUCK._

General Order 1053 was also written and signed. The palace was to be evacuated by July 4th. And, last and certainly most secret, was General Order 1052 (B).

_I, Marshal Eagle, approve the reactivation of The Pro__gram._

He read it, read it again and poised the tip of his quill at the parchment, able to destroy the order with a single penstroke. It was evil to breed dragonets specifically for war, and have them fight before their dragonhood was due: it would deprive them of their childhoods, their fathers, their mothers and everything else he had known when he was at a young age.

Sitting in his desk drawer was a letter some soldiers had wrote, from the last war, asking where they could fight. Long conflict had left a damaging imprint on their malleable minds and all they could think about was battle.

That was not something he wanted to do, but if things kept going so badly he might have to do it.

An early dawn unfurled from the east, the same as Byrd was seeing a hundred miles away: Eagle had worked through the day and the night, and the exhaustion he'd fought was overtaking him. He would blink and wake up in a different position: he'd swayed during the blackout, and his body's natural balance was what saved him from an embarrassing tip-over.

Talons clicked in the outside hall, and a head poked in the door. Ruby. Eagle managed a salute, the sloppiest he'd ever given a royal.

"No combat unit ever passed inspection," she said. "You've drafted orders?"

"Yes," said Eagle, and read her the first order. "The populace needs to be mobilized."

"What's this part about the first mountain line?"

Eagle bit his lip.

"That would be tied into the second order," he said. "We don't have the numbers to hold the palace."

Ruby opened her mouth and then shut it again. The rising disk of the sun no longer brought cheer, but dread of what would happen in the new day. Forty-eight hours was all it took for the world to go to hell. The worst thing she could do was order him to defend this place to the last soldier.

The queen gave the slightest tilt of her head.

"Very well then," she said. "These stone walls never held much sentiment for me anyway."

A moment.

Eagle's mind and his mouth were out of whack, and once he started talking it was hard to stop.

"I have a moral conundrum," he said. "What if I had to do the wrong thing to protect dragons?"

Ruby turned from the golden window, set her claws by a stone joist.

"I'm listening."

"What if that was the only way? If there was no alternative, should I?"

He'd already had to live with himself once over the program dragonets, had always been able to speak up but never had. The high point of his career was defined by cowardice, even before Scarlet killed Marshal Alpine over the matter. It was not lost on Eagle that he was a Marshal now.

"There is always another way, but it takes thinking, with this," said Ruby, and she tapped her skull. "Talons and spears can't do everything. The program was the worst way we could've handled the great war, but then, everyone was hard-pressed by Scarlet's cruelty. That was the way her mind worked."

Her tail curled around her legs.

"These invaders, they're dragons too. They'll make mistakes. You can make them make mistakes, when you get inside their heads. Go take their overconfidence and turn it into despair, and win with that."

Then she gave a wry smile.

"But I'm just a young queen who doesn't know anything, back from reprimanding the gate staff. And as your queen, I'm ordering you to get some rest. Marshal Forge is arriving shortly, and the kingdom will get along fine without you for eight hours, even if we are… relocating."

"Yes, ma'am," said Eagle.

The queen leaped from the floor joist and glided down the palace flanks. Finally allowed recuperation, Eagle fell asleep as the sun's disk cleared the horizon. It was the first time he'd done it since the end of the great war, and as his eyes closed a torpid thought remarked that this time would not be the last.

* * *

**Afternoon, July 4****th****: 5,015. **

For Glory, the Rainforest was home. Its people were her people now – even the Nightwings. It was a land of safety, an alcove war heretofore had left untouched.

And now she would ask them to go fight for a tribe they hardly knew and most could care less for, because of her friendship with Ruby and her belief – for her conviction was unverified by her eyes at this point – that something was coming to the continent.

All the same, she remembered the prophecy of Moonwatcher. Moonwatcher was right: of course she'd be. When Moon talked, Glory listened.

Light green crept across her scales where beads of purple belonged, and she focused on her native colors and the pale rescinded.

The people had been called to war once – only once, and there was no telling if they'd back her. The old Queens would not like it. The Nightwings would not like it. But as Glory stood still on the smooth wooden platform of the medical treehouse, she realized her position was akin to a dragon in leading strings, like a puppet. Power was the master holding her captive.

She should base her decision on whether she thought she was right, not whether it was most expedient for her position or status; else she would tread the well-worn path to evil and tyranny.

Queen Glory believed she was right. The difficulty was in getting the rest of the tribe to think that way (for Nightwings and Rainwings had blended well enough in the four years since the war that they might well be called two sides of a misshapen coin). The timidity and fear which had hung about her since her earliest days lapped at the foundations of her emotional mask, as it always had, and she fought to put it behind her, as she always would.

A creak made her ears swivel outwards; there was another dragon here; a step like a Rainwing, but heavy in a way peculiar to -

"I know you're skulking around, Deathbringer. Come on out."

A hybrid dragonet looked up from his strawberries at the unprovoked voice, then shrugged and went back to arranging them in neat rows of plump fruit, as if the Queen talking to thin air happened every day, which it did; her acrimonious tone cutting through the humid warmth, saying: 'and wouldn't you like to know?' over the mahogany and the green knots of vine rope. Now a black talon perched confidently on the cordage; a wiry, sinuous dragon flowed from shingles to floor and reformed in a strong, upright stance with his head cocked to one side and a slight grin caressing his snout.

"At your service," said Deathbringer, and: "Why are you so gray?"

Though there was no 'My Queen', Glory could not care less. He was a throwback to her younger days, when she was a bird still looking for a nest to settle in. Had she found it in him? Even her heart never understood that aspect of their relationship.

Now she relied on him as an adviser at the very least.

"What would the Nightwings think of another war?"

"What would a fly think upon sighting a frog?" asked Deathbringer. "After Jade Mountain most of us would prefer to stick to our knitting."

'You say most of you,' Glory would like to have said, if circumstances were less urgent. Deathbringer, too, expected a rejoinder of the sort, and though he was looking at her half his attention was probably dedicated to the next piece of banter.

"To tell the Nightwings to rethink things again is too much, after the three world-shattering experiences they've been through in the last five years," said Darkstalker while she was waiting. "I daresay I've grown comfortable with the peace; me, the perfect assassin."

"Who also is afraid of scavengers wielding pointy sticks," said Glory. "So you would not mind it, and your friends would be comfortable with it."

A moment.

"It's not like there's a war on, is there?" asked Deathbringer.

That pale green was skimming along beneath the surface of her scales, building the pressure to breach.

"There is," said Glory, "or at least, Eagle seems to think so."

"Eagle?" said Deathbringer. "Eagle? How could a staid Skywing general know more about it than me?"

"He says he ran into Seawings who were fleeing from the south-east, and they told him it was an invader."

The hybrid dragonet in the corner dropped a berry onto the floor and both of them looked at him before looking back at each other.

"Unparalleled accuracy! Impeccable sourcing," said Deathbringer. "And if he's right then every tribe on Pyrrhia is screwed."

The cheery, clear weather above their heads was at odds with the somber mood beneath the sky, beneath the sun, the light of which speckled down to Deathbringer's black scales, filtered like the leaves and seeming much like the spots of a leopard; only these swayed with the rustling of the trees.

"Not us," went on Deathbringer. "You want to get into the coming war; of course you do: I can read the worry on your face; it's clouding your snout like a thunderstorm moving in on a crisp day. I think you're right to want to help the other tribes, but the long and the short of it is the Rainwing kingdom doesn't have anybody to field except me and a few hundred traumatized Nightwings, which is hardly grounds for an army. Putting some of your Rainwings into a war would be like sending dragonets into battle; they couldn't handle it, nobody could, if you even convinced Fruit Bat and the others to risk their tails in the first place."

He paused, restraining himself, then went on with dignity.

"There's a yawning canyon of a difference between fending off a tribe of Nightwings who aren't even expecting you and holding your own against a group of invaders who're already hankering for trouble. The whole thing seems farfetched. I believe it because I know you, but half the dragons in the tribe don't, and the other half will call you crazy, and between those is only a slim margin of those who you could persuade to help. It's hard to believe in miracles."

"I can convince them," said Glory. "I'll phrase it in the long term, since former queens never seem to think about tomorrow. And, as for sending dragons with no experience into a war, it's not right."

Deathbringer's eyes flickered, and he lowered his head and she knew he agreed.

"And that's why you're in charge of training them."

"Ha," said Deathbringer. "I supposed so. I'll go and find some of the Rainwings I know want to see the world and have some virility in their blood, and I'll teach them. My art of backstabbery goes well with Rainwing camouflage, you should know. But making soldiers out of any but the best of the best in less than six weeks is impossible."

He went out to the platform and spread his wings.

"Don't let your gratitude at getting an early warning slow you down, Glory; you'd better make use of it, because the best intelligence in the world is of no use if the dragon in charge pays no heed."

And then he was gone.

Glory shuffled her wings and looked back into the hut, where the hybrid dragonet was, or should've been. He'd disappeared while they were talking, but where to? A quick exploration of the scent yielded a hole behind one of the convalescent bunks; while the others had smooth bedding, this one's straw was recently ruffled. Glory peered into the hole and looked at the dragonet's warm eyes.

"It's alright to come out now," she said, and offered the dragonet a talon.

He sniffled.

"I don't like all that talk of wars and invaders and stuff," he said. "It sounds like controlling people."

He finished lamely.

"I don't like it."

And Glory stifled a low chuckle, for it would have been inappropriate to address the young one's fears. "It is bad," she said. "Come along, Peacemaker; I think your spirits will recover with some strawberries."

* * *

**AN:**

**Everything is going according to plan… ha ha! If you liked it, I'd appreciate it if you told me about it. There's no author in the world whose day wouldn't be brightened by someone leaving a review on his story. **

**Next up, Captain Thrush! I feel like he's been a bit neglected since his introduction.  
**

**W****ritten May 11****th**** – ****May 28****th****, 2020.**

**Published Sunday May 31st, 2020.**


	6. Contact - Unhappy Vindication

**Contact – Unhappy Vindication**

* * *

**Written May 28****th**** – ****June 7****th****, 2020.**

**Published June 14th, 2020.**

**I would like to add a quick author's note here - while my posting schedule has been clockwork as of late, I have some trips and things in my personal life to attend to and that means I won't be posting for an extended period of time - call it two weeks in July and decreased productivity all through June. Rest assured that I am writing through this time - just not as much as I'd like to. Anyhow, on to the review responses:**

**To Unazaki: I work very hard to keep it interesting! I thank you for taking the time to review this story; every little bit helps.**

**And I think I've dawdled long enough; on to the chapter you were waiting for.**

* * *

**Evening July 3****rd****, 5,015: The Mudwing Palace.**

The crashing tinkle of breaking glass woke up Wells with a start. He sprang from the sofa like a jack-in-the-box popping open its lid, half-expecting a leering four-winged dragon at his throat with a talon poised to cut his arteries and leave him bleeding out. But there was no wasp, only a cascade of successively louder dragon screeches, thumping and banging and clattering like pots and pans falling to the floor, liberated from their wall hooks. Exhaustion acted like a deadly soporific on his mind and body, slowing his response to the dragons who might kill him now that Crest wasn't here.

The colonel burst into the room.

"Three moons, you were right!"

"I am unhappily vindicated," said Wells, too tired to make a fuss out of it. He strode forward and gazed through the yellowish window and down to the dimly lit courtyard of stone. The sun had set, and now the moving shadows flitting about before the pillars were as real as the forms which cast them. A warrior's morbid sarcasm came over him, and he remarked:  
"I would've thought the killing fields would be better lit."

"There's no time, we've got to go," said the colonel, and made to get away.

Wells barred him from the window.

"Your duty belongs to your kingdom. I stopped by four hours ago and gave you a chance."

A roar drifted up from the courtyard below. Another crash – dragons were fighting in the air and ramming into towers, stonework, everything.

"I'm done warning dragons who won't listen," he said. "And I'm out of here."

"You can't, not on your own," said the colonel. "Not with the two of us, either."

"Then let's bloody well find soldiers who'll fight their way out of this mess," said Wells. The colonel, once a symbol of military efficiency and due caution, now seemed a cowardly bureaucrat. A Mudwing came through the window and smashed it to atoms, twinkling glass shards glistening a pale whitish yellow hue from the lamps beneath their talons. The soldier was already dead.

Sergeant and colonel looked at each other, then flew into the maelstrom in search of friendlies, the tiny hole in Wells's wing augmented by the thin, bleeding scar caused by the glass pane when he'd jumped off.

A wasp careened into the space before him, talons already filled with treasure; a blow from Crest's brass comb twisted its head sideways with a meaty _chonk _and it fell to the cobblestone a hundred yards below, unconscious and very shortly dead. The whole world had turned upside down, the morals and sense had fallen up and all that was left was madness, desperation, chaos. Dragons lived and died in brutal seconds where there was no time to think.

It reminded Wells of Abalone.

That thought led him to Crest.

And Crest told him to get out of here.

He found a still-alive Mudwing standing rock-still on a dais as-yet unharmed by the tempest, eyes glazed with shock: perched atop her ears was the golden tiara of a queen. Wells grasped her talon as he flew by, and for a moment it held. Then his momentum carried him away and the grip was lost forever. As he watched a wasp came up behind her and speared her through; dead in an instant. Her spirit left her in her last exhale and settled on his shoulders like another stone added to an already unbearable burden.

Wells prayed.

All they had to do was get west and north, west and north. The colonel was lagging behind – he would not go back. A Mudwing soldier joined with the little convoy – he would not go back. The eyes of the four-winged enemies seemed off; he could not place it, but they were wrong in a way, different from those of the dragons he'd killed in Abalone or those Nonam had torched. It was the darkness playing tricks; the roars getting to him.

He was going to lose it if this kept on.

They were outside the palace grounds now, and into its suburbs; elegant Mudwing homes dug into a raised bank out of the swamp, giving the impression of dry living. Dragons rose from them now, panicked, or huddled in backyard alcoves, frozen from fear. Some died before they got twenty feet off the ground; some made it to the row of soldiery escaping as best they could.

They were drawing attention now. If he was bogged down he died. He smashed another wasp out of the way with his powerful Seawing tail, pressed on as swiftly as an arrow, burning through reserves of energy replenished by the afternoon's food. The wasps were slower than he was – barely – but they were better-fed. Already he'd drawn away from the palace and gained the refuge of the rank lowlands, yet the angry four-wings behind him grew neither larger nor smaller.

He could not go on forever.

He could not turn back or he would be killed.

And ahead of him there was a cordon of wasps, waiting to capture escapees just like him.

There was one option.

"Follow me!" he yelled to the wind, and whither the call went or whether it reached the ears of his compatriots he could not know. He dived, aiming straight for a watery part of the marsh, and in his peripherals he saw the enemies following him. He hit the duckweed with a boom and a splash, and scrabbled down to the grungy, utterly dark bottom two-score of feet below.

The mud caked on his gills; he was choking. For the rest of his stay down here he would be eternally wiping away the clogging dirt, never allowed more than a moment's rest unless he risked unconsciousness on the surface.

It was hell.

It was living.

There was a great fuss above him; dragons splashing around, shouting, expostulating. Cautiously he crawled on the bottom, hidden by the night. It went like this: a pause, some creeping, a rush over his head, a pause, muttering from a foreign tongue, utter silence, a scratch of an itch, some creeping, and so on. Eventually he touched something warm and scaly; a dragon.

It whirled and punched at him: Wells flashed his luminescence till the Mudwing settled down and realized it was a Seawing and not the unknown enemy. They sheltered in each other's presence for a long while, then, when the Mudwing must've been about out of breath, surfaced to see if the wasps had given up or if there was a spear waiting to stab their snouts as they came up.

There was nothing and nobody; just the light of the palace lit up like an Icewing snow globe, only this was yellow instead of blue. It was not burning, but it was being sacked. Raucous laughter drifted towards the two where they were languishing in the mud.

A whisper.

"Did you see Moorhen?"

The Mudwing's voice was deep, not unkind, but unsteady with horror.

Wells had to hedge.

"Why?"

"I'm her brother."

A pause.

"Oh."

"Did you see anything?"

Wells put a talon on the dragon's back, keeping him from going into the fray. The Seawing gulped; this was one hell of an evening.

"Not really."

"Anything!"

"Ssh."

"She's dead," broke in a voice Wells had come to think of as weaselly.

It was that colonel.

The brother's chest shook in silent sobs, but he did not cry. It was a strong dragon who could hold himself in like that, but the grief – Wells didn't want to think of it.

"What's your name?" he asked.

It was a long while before the Mudwing could compose himself.

"Foxglove."

Slowly, surely, some of the other Mudwings emerged from the mud like ancient horrors, each movement a fright in the pit of his stomach before he discerned that the dragon coming towards him was friendly.

"Headcount," whispered Wells. The word was passed around and came back. Of a palace of perhaps twenty-five hundred, with surroundings totaling thousands more, there were nine bunched up in this little group.

"Who's in charge?" asked a voice.

"Foxglove?" asked the colonel. Perhaps he was ashamed of fleeing; if so there was some hope for him yet.

"The prince?"

"Somebody told him Moorhen died."

A pause.

"Well there's nothing I can say about that that could possibly pay true respects to his bond," said the voice again. "I'm Othic."

"Phosphorus."

And several others, veterans mostly.

"We need to get out of dodge," said Wells. "When that sun rises those wasps are going to be out here moving forward to the next town, and the next town. I know 'em."

"Who are they, anyway?" asked Phosphorus. "And how come you know so much about them?"

"Four-winged invaders from somewhere else," said Wells. "I fought them in Abalone. There are some with long weapons that shoot darts that kill you if they hit you; poison, and some with stingers, like Sandwings."

"Any weaknesses?"

Othic this time.

"They die easily if you hit them over the head, and they're scared of fire."

Wells spent a long moment more looking at the castle.

"Let's move," he said. "I've discovered you can go a long way on your belly."

* * *

**July 4****th****, 5,015: Somewhere in the Skywing Kingdom.**

In the scrolls the characters were always supposed to feel regret when they killed someone. Regret mean emotion; emotion meant sapience. Regret let them know they were sane.

Byrd felt no such quality within him. His heart and his head agreed at last; he was grateful his soldiers had mostly survived taking this town; reluctant to push onward, but more reluctant to chew on the consequences from headquarters if he fell back. If there was sorrow within him it was for the mud-colored one who Monarda killed; not quite dragonet, but not quite dragon either, and boiling atop that was a thin layer of slag-like anger that events had to resolve this way.

Life was being spent on the green hills, from whose slopes protruded sheer cliffs beneath a scurf of dirty earth, the rock gray and lime-yellow and ochre, striated and worn smooth in the nooks where the rain ran. There were caves in the crags also, and now they were out of the town and the tunnels worried him, for it seemed every bushy fox tail was the nose of a red soot; the music of the torpid summer breeze playing the boughs was the whispering of orders being passed to a hidden force.

The hills here seemed great, but far off to the west he saw the tops of gigantic mountains; tons and tons of rock so immense they seemed to go on forever, even in the atmospheric haze, and that brought the hills here to size, and made them seem less grandiose and easier to travel.

He spread his wings like he'd seen the enemy do, trying to catch the membranous limbs on a therm, but he sank like a weighted scroll; the draft failed to buoy him, for the four-bladed instruments were too fine to retain the lifting force, and the wind tugged at his scales as it slipped away from him and was lost for ever. Others behind him tried to copy him, or looked on with neutral snouts and glinting eyes filled with humor. Byrd decided he'd had enough, and he aborted the experiment and went back to flying the way he usually did.

There was a turn in the valley ahead, and a tall, rounded outcropping of rock and wild obscured from his sight what was around the bend. From above the country here looked almost like the little ripples in the ocean-bed at the beach when they'd jumped off Pantala into the unknown. It was as if a great Flood had washed over this part of the continent, spontaneous as the dump of water from a dragonet's bucket over a sand castle.

But he was not above it at current, but flying at the level of the hilltops; there were enemies here, and those which remained from the battle of Smolderfax and the ensuing skirmish at its hill might be waiting in the trees to exact their pound of revenge. Advertising his position by taking altitude gave his position away and gained him nothing.

"Halt!" he cried.

The body of the company came to an orderly stop; forty-five able dragons plus Chervil in the van, admirably holding his place despite the great pain it gave him. Byrd gave his soldiers a cursory glance, searching for the drooping wings of exhaustion, the blinking eyes of fatigue. They seemed alright, though heavily laden with dried meat taken from the area around Smolderfax. Some clung to the rocks on the west side of the valley to his left, some hovered. Stinger popped over the ridge from second company, shrugged and went back to the dragons on the other side. Doubtless he would go on, for dragons made bad time if they were pausing half their journey.

So the other sergeant must have thought.

"A flight of dragons on our westernmost flank, and a flight scouring the woods ahead," said Byrd. "If you see anything, report back to me. The rest of us keep on in this valley."

He named Bolt and Monarda to lead before them. Monarda had the skills and the intestinal fortitude, and she had her head set solidly on her shoulders. And Bolt? Bolt needed the experience. There was always the possibility of deceiving the soots doubtless lying ahead, or of flanking them, or of drawing them into a trap, but this was the tried-and-true way, the easiest for his subordinates to execute – for as an officer there was always the niggling doubt in the back of his mind about whether his soldiers could pull off anything complicated.

But even this was a sight better than running down the bluff corridor with no recon ahead to warn him of growing danger; he should've done this a long time ago, though he comforted himself by thinking 'I was busy'. That would be like a game of blind dragon's buff played in the dark, daylight or no, with daggers awaiting the back of the blind dragon.

That was exactly what Stinger was doing.

"Forward quarter, and on till dusk," he ordered.

"Yes sir," they said, and all was right in the world.

He could choose not to warn Stinger, and let Stinger run into an ambush and ruin, and a demotion from headquarters, and Byrd inevitably lieutenant of the battalion – or he could tell Stinger of the danger, and keep their force intact for another day of fighting. One option was better for the Hivewings; the other gave more power to him.

An hour after they'd begun again, he chose the former.

"And get a messenger to Stinger and tell him to get recon out," he said, as if continuing the conversation directly from sixty minutes ago. His designs were a moment too soon. Hardly had the courier disappeared over the eastern hill than there was movement ahead of them, blurry and dirty and brown, as if dragons of the dirtwings had risen from the earth and were upon them – for still he called the sepia dragons this.

"Bristle below!" he called; their formation of flights strung out in diamonds came together with dragons wielding spears to defend them from below and blowpipes for range.

Byrd bit his lip. The soldiers gave him sidelong looks. Shouldn't they fire?

It took sharp eyes to discern in the body of the enemy the eight-limbed form of Hivewings, but Byrd saw four wings, and his concern was ameliorated.

"Identification!" he called, when they had reached hearing range and it was obvious to all that orange and black stripes peered from beneath waistcoats of mud and dirt and leaves.

"Bolt and company, sir," came the reply from fifty yards.

It sounded like the guy.

"Report," said Byrd.

"We mussed in a streambank, then proceeded forward. There's five soots holed up in a tall bluff northwest looking out for us, and they outnumbered us but they didn't notice us, so I skedaddled back here. There might be a bigger force near them, sir."

"Extrapolating is my job, not yours," said Byrd.

"Yes sir," said Bolt, not much cowed. Dragons of his type would keep wondering in their minds, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

But it was an excellent move, camouflaging the scout group like that, relying on the inattentiveness of lookouts who'd seen nothing and expected to see nothing to slip through valleys which were putatively guarded.

So why did Bolt sometimes do stupid things?

"Half of you camouflage in the valley stream, the other half stay your stripes," ordered Byrd, reversing his no-complicated-tactics policy. To split up his force any more than he had was to be overwhelmed individually by the ambushers he know knew for sure were in the hills, but he had a plan. While the dragons camouflaging were being picked by their comrades, Byrd took Bolt aside.

"Where did you get the idea to roll in the mud?"

"I was curious to see if anybody'd see me if I did," said he, "and whether they'd mistake us."

Byrd would say the tactic worked pretty well. The answer explained why the soldier was at times brilliant and at others made seemingly dumb moves; he was insatiably curious.

It made him wonder how many camouflaged enemies were running around with his lookouts oblivious to them.

That was an unpleasant thought.

"Get the dirt off in your brook, then lead us to the cliff," said Byrd. "How close would you say the lookouts were to Stinger?"

"Oh, not very far, sir. Second will run right into them if they keep going."

Then they needed to hurry. He looked ahead, saw the friendlies rising from the middle of the valley with dirt all over them. Where was Monarda? The seeds of worry began to burn holes in his thought processes, and they were hard to quench.

No; Monarda could take care of herself.

"Bolt here will lead us to the enemy. You in the camouflage, keep in touch but stay in the trees. When we find a large concentration of soots we'll blow the horn and you'll hit the enemy flanks."

"Yes sir, sir," they said.

Battle was close upon them, and Byrd put the matter of Monarda out of his mind. If she was alright that was well and good; if she wasn't, that was her mistake, and if her force was estranged from his, they would work back to the point of their departure and catch up to third company from there.

"Forward!" he ordered, and the soldiers tagged along behind Byrd and Bolt; Byrd a beat ahead for purposes of appearance, but his subordinate nudging him in the right direction every time they went off track. They went over the westward ridge and settled into the next valley; a false path that would lead a dragon in circles if he wasn't careful, for the corridors ended suddenly, and curved when they seemed straight, and obscured the sun and made navigation difficult, all of which was dangerous to the uninitiated traveler.

But they had compasses, one for every four of them on paper (though two of the twelve had been lost in the river at Smolderfax somehow), and common sense and Bolt's inner direction skills, which led them unerringly to the bluff, a loaf of sheer rock perched on a table-like plateau, with trees growing on the crust. Byrd ordered his force beneath it, making a great show of being oblivious to everything and seeing nothing, while all the while he scanned out the corners of his eyes, his head turning neither right nor left. The soots must have been delighted.

"Hivewings ahead!" cried a lookout; it was Stinger, there was no one else it could be, and Byrd's plans were unraveling in front of his eyes. The enemy would be spooked, would not make an attack during daylight, would not play into his talons as he had so hoped.

Those wise words of long past came to him, unindoctrinated as he was in them at officer school. _No plan survives first contact with the enemy_, they said, though he thought of it in a rather different way. What was the use of planning anything at all, if plans came apart so easily?

There was a notch in the bluffs ahead, and Stinger's dragons were traipsing through it, perhaps five miles away, but clearly in Byrd's area of engagement. It was a perfect place for an ambush, too, and as Byrd whipped out his spyglass he saw the train of Stinger's group going through in diamond groups of four or five, undisciplined and ripe for the pickings, and the courier he'd sent coming back in frustration.

It was as well he did.

Half an hour later Byrd and company were making good speed north along the next ridge westward, slowing every now and then to let the camouflaged dragons behind them keep up without breaking concealment and becoming conspicuous. Stinger was still racing ahead of them, gaining two miles of separation every hour. A gap was opening up between them, making them weak. Observing on the wing, Byrd looked to his spyglass again, eyeing the strange environs, then cast a cursory glance at the friendlies, expecting the usual snafu.

They were embroiled in combat. Bolt's unlooked-for hunch was true, and a dread prophecy had come to pass, its words unspoken by anyone but known by all.

"Flank speed!" ordered Byrd, and third company broke from its stealth. But the wide expanse which had grown between the two forces would take at least twenty minutes to traverse. As he watched the lead of Stinger's group spun around and attempted to succor their rear, yet as quickly as they arrived the soots engaged the stragglers of the move.

Byrd had warned Stinger and Stinger had paid no heed. And he had best look after himself or he would be shortly engaged as second company was – there! Russet movement in the trees.

"Slow to full!"

Not a moment too soon. The move bunched his soldiers into one mass, the uncamouflaged ones anyway. But where were the others?

No time for that now. A deluge of soots fell upon them like angry hurricanes before they could get into formation properly, and there was a hue and cry from both sides.

"Spears, spears!" he ordered. Some failed to respond; doubtless they had not heard him. But others moved at least, better than last time, and put up a defense from which the enemy veered, unwilling to impale their own on Hivewing steel. There was an outpouring of flame from which he instinctively recoiled, and the enemy burst through the smoke like demons and all was chaos.

He was twisting and dodging and biting and doing everything he could to fight back; his life was his to surrender on a deathbed, not here, not now. He thought he killed another dragon; it was impossible to know. Then the soots retreated, circling the chaos and looking for stragglers. Hivewings appeared from over the ridge, only four of them, but much more to Byrd in the heat of battle and likewise to the enemy, for they made to withdraw.

A cheer went up from the beleaguered company, and he looked and then he saw why. The enemy had run square into the other half of third, stalking unseen through the trees; the tide of battle had reversed.

"Crescent! Engage!" cried Byrd.

The enemy was caught between hammer and tongs, unable to escape except at the fringes; still he gave up not arms but fought like a tiger in its den, twice as dangerous as before. The enemy dead and dying were strewn across the meadow when the last of the soots gave up and bugged out.

There was no time to attend to them, however; Stinger was still embattled, the clashing of weapons and dragon roars audible over the buzzing of the flies. Byrd ordered them on, and at their presence the enemy in Stinger's valley feinted, then withdrew. For him it was a sudden victory; for Stinger it was an embarrassing defeat.

"Report!" cried Byrd, looking over his company himself. They were shifting and writhing, going over the bodies for souvenirs, and all sorts of things. "Stop moving."

And when they were all lined up he counted forty-three dragons, including Monarda's, who had come back in the nick of time. Five more casualties of injury, to a varying degree – and here was the forty-fourth dragon, worse hit than Chervil, and clearly unable to go on much longer in this hostile country, yet unable to go back, either.

They had won by a long shot, but the butcher's bill was larger than he would've liked. Such was the nature of war. There was one dead somewhere; eventually he was found and a cairn of stones heaped above his final resting place.

His casualties had doubled in an hour, but Stinger's plight revealed it could've been much, much worse. A third of second company was hurt, and three more were dead, and equipment and supplies strewn everywhere with no replacement. They spent an hour hunting for weapons and compasses and dropped food, and more time getting water for the injuries and building cairns, and at the end of it the victorious enthusiasm of third company was damped. As to Stinger? His morale was the lowest of the low.

An answer came to Byrd's earlier question about plans. They were useful inasmuch as they allowed soldiers to respond in a crisis where there was no clear leadership, and so gave order to otherwise hopeless chaos. Often they went horribly astray, but without them even the smallest action was a monumental task.

The new system was looking more attractive every second.

In the meantime, the sun was setting, and the soldiers had little will to go on, except to get away from the scene of the recent graves, the trees still stained ochre with foul-smelling blood. They went north a few miles to a brook, and posted a watch and ate victuals, though Byrd ordered there would be no fire that night. It would've given their position away, but as it was the cold, smoked food was tasteless, and the lack of light on the rapidly darkening ridge meant there was no cheer.

Things seemed like they couldn't get any worse.

Naturally, the weather decided now was the time to act up.

The gathering storm jutted its lip before it near the ground, and curved away from them until it reached the midpoint of its height, whence it billowed back, and spread out at hitting an invisible ceiling, and the cloud-top formed the surface of an anvil. A thin layer of air separated the clouds from the ground ahead of them, and the land beneath was darkened even to dragon-sight, obscured by blue-gray cascades of rain which fell from above, churned by the wind midair.

It was beautiful.

It was also headed right for them.

Dark came, and it rained and it rained and it rained, paused, then rained some more. It was halfway through the dratted night before any of them could get some sleep, and of course then they were woken up for their turn as watch, so that when morning came they were in a very bitter mood, yet there was nothing to do but go on.

Confusticate and bother this war.

"Well," said Chervil, as they shook off the rain and slapped mosquitoes before the start, "it's got to get better since we've gone through the worse."

Oh Chervil. If only Byrd could share his enthusiasm, he would be the cheerfullest guy in the world.

* * *

**July 4****th **** \- ****8****th****, 5,015: Also Somewhere in the Skywing Kingdom.**

That Thrush made it through the enemy lines while hardly noticing he had was not, in hindsight, a particularly big surprise. That he was in some consternation when he realized he had wasn't a big surprise, either. But it was what he did after this epiphany which set him apart from lesser commanders, and his soldiers from lesser dragons, and – you shall see. At any rate it was at this point that he decided to use best judgment. There were (in his opinion) wasps down the entire coast of Pyrrhia, stretched thin like butter too finely put on bread, and with their supply lines long and doubtless getting longer, with the vanguard (wherever they were, and if they existed) far behind, left in the dust by the huge gains of the last couple of days.

Thrush had a very practical mind.

"Too unproductive to keep going south," he'd say. So he ordered a full turn and took the hundred west, moving by night, eating the miles in droves, so that he came very nearly to the coast before any news of his passage could be carried to headquarters in the conventional way, or made sense of if indeed 111th brigade (for it was they who he had burst through during the first advance) could have gotten the news by the new way, for the speed of his journey could not be anticipated by one unfamiliar with Skywings in general and Thrush in particular.

It was on the sixth that he at last sighted the enemy lines of communication; about forty dragons coming out of Azley, a few hundred miles south of Smolderfax and nearer the coast; exceedingly near indeed, and the risk he ran of coming to grips with the vanguard of second cohort he could only guess at, though it was an incredible one. There were wasps, and Skywings transporting freight under them; obviously not of their own choice, for there were guards there, sixteen.

And Thrush retreated from where he first sighted them, and guessed their path through one of the passes of the bluffs, and laid up in it without showing himself in the way Byrd had feared two days ago, and justifiably so. The enemy made camp in the valley, and one-by-one, dooming themselves to their fate, the sentries went to sleep.

Thrush had their throats cut.

Now there were forty Skywings freed, and a good deal of them veterans, or reserve warriors, or youngsters who'd never been in a war but had been trained by their fathers and mothers to handle themselves in it. They were excitable, unknowing of the eternal consequence which came from slaying another being. They needed supervision, and Thrush set about organizing the new joins with military precision; putting them under dragons who had been sergeants or even colonels in their time, and folding the remainder into his own unit, all the while picking through the enemy supplies with the constraint of moving before dawn.

No one wanted to have their necks sliced.

Despite this, however, the mood of the company was optimistic; they had food for days, stored in caches here or on their bodies; their enemy was naive and unsuspecting; never having had to fight a war in their generation, while the dragons under Thrush had been through as many as fifteen years of fighting in one case, and sixteen of the invaders were lying dead in the meadow while two-score of their tribe had been liberated and were now fighting with them (though half of them were very confused, and frightened inside, and insecure from the world going topsy-turvy).

The Skywings were uniquely prepared for war, being a tribe almost made for it, and trained in self-defense before they came of age and battle-winning afterwards, and a practical mindset which allowed them to get over the shock of being invaded (mostly) before other tribes would've stopped blinking.

It was a sanguine log report which Thrush wrote on the morning of the seventh.

_The enemy is not so powerful as we originally believed: after breaking through their thin lines we have been tearing around the country. 1 LoC wrecked w no casualties; noted location of intercept on map; departing for different area but will come back here someday to catch another convoy._

Eagle, however, was much more beleaguered. Looking at the map on his desk it could be said he was in a good position; he had a number of divisions coming together, and brigades all over the place, and battalions sprouting from the fertile Skywing population like weeds.

But he knew the reports of Skywing strength were wrong. The divisions were overzealous paper creations; the brigades were about the size of companies, and the battalions were zany, disorganized units with no cohesion as yet. The main objective had been specified – they would gradually fall back to the mountains, taking everything with them – but such a cleancut directive was hard to accomplish in practice. The young dragons who were charged with taking Skywing material to their strongholds might not know the way; their elders might have war injuries restricting their ability in a fight, and it was doubtful the order had even reached half the kingdom.

He longed for some good news – perhaps the enemy were not so powerful as he'd thought they were; perhaps they were inexperienced; perhaps their lines of communication were stretched; perhaps their front was coming apart at the seams. But he didn't think so; at least, there was a good chance Thrush had gone and been caught and died, a hundred decent warriors gone down with him, or on another part of the continent and not helping him.

So Eagle was in a somber mood when at last they left the Skywing palace on the sixth, the stronghold which had been the seat of the kingdom for so many thousands of years, and now he was the one who would be forever remembered in the tribe's eyes as the marshal who abandoned it. That he had forever earned himself a place in the history books wasn't much of a comfort.

There was at least another marshal on the trip: Forge, recently arrived from the mountains, but everything which was worth talking about had been talked about, and rehashing their plight would be misery, so all in all it was a quiet journey west to the higher peaks of the Claws of the Clouds. Ruby, too, a beacon of hope on the fourth, was grim.

They crossed the Diamond Spray river and soon were in the wild country.

"Here we are," said Forge, on the eighth, when they looked up and beheld the first mountain of the first mountain line; Alpine Peak, renamed after that dead grand marshal from the great war whose steps Eagle now felt he was faithfully tracing. It had an older name: Azkilach: the Stronghold.

"A fourth of the way to Possibility," said Eagle. There was a great deal of mountain land between here and that town, insurance in case the war went even more wrong, but the distance already traversed reminded him how far they had fallen.

"Skywings; gardeners, guards, cooks, and what-ho," he said, addressing those who had come along with them. "You are soldiers first, and professionals. The tunnels in this fortress are old and decrepit, and we must fortify them."

Finding them was a hard job in and of itself. The sheer slopes, snowy crevices and craggy rimrock defied description; this was the highest mountain in all these parts of the north, and it showed. Though the base was sizzling with midsummer heat, the peak chilled Eagle to the bones. And it was a thousand feet down from the peak that they found the gate, facing southwards and protected from the elements by a gray outcropping, its bars rusted away by untold age, the rock at its foundation cracked by the freezing and thawing which came to this place every hundred years or so, during particularly bad storms.

"There's a cave-in farther down," said Forge. Being the less important marshal, he'd ventured down the tunnel before them, and found a pile of rock blocking their way.

Creating another set of tunnels, and another gate, and another labyrinth within the mountain – that was outside the reach of what they could do. It was spoken in whispers of their ancestors' propensity with sudden fire, and blasting, and a society of craftmanship so competent the average mason of their time did work fit for queens. And as Eagle looked upon the ancient structure, he knew well they could never regenerate all of its old glory.

But they could bend it to their own ends. And that was exactly what he did.

"Put up pillars to keep up the roof, and dig through the blockage," he ordered. "And get a fire going, and a party going around the mountains assembling all the dragons you can find."

Even Ruby helped with the digging; it was one thing to be ordered to do something unpleasant, and another thing to see your ruler doing it alongside you, for as long as you were, and with about as many rest breaks as you had, which was to say none. The walls of the square tunnel were shored up with cobble and the blockage was partially cleared by nightfall.

"Eagle!" called Forge, from down the hall. "Permission to explore the halls, sir."

"Granted," Eagle shouted back. "But make a map!"

"Of course."

And marshal and soldiers tramped down the confusing corridors and vanished out of sight, and the flickering orange glow of their torches glinting off the frozen walls was the only remark of their passage, until that too faded. It reminded Eagle of ferreting out Blister's underground fortresses near Jade Mountain all those years ago; going on a dozen now, the bad old days, but none the better for the passing of time.

The notion of giving up tickled the back of his mind. To put his people through another war; more death and another blight on their future – this was anathema. But to surrender to a foreign power was also anathema; it had never been done, and he was not about to do it. Already he had surrendered the palace.

"The buck stops here," he said, muttering.

"You were saying?" asked Ruby, from just inside the firelight, tired and bedraggled yet still looking fine.

"The buck stops here."

"There might come a time when we'll have to give from here, too. We can't get attached to this place," said Ruby.

"I do mean to keep it," said Eagle. He looked down the valley and to the base of the next mountain east, its snowy peak a foreground to the far glint of the palace, still visible if one cared to look long and hard. Two weeks ago he was looking forward to peace and quiet, and a dignified retirement and perhaps children. Now… "What place do we have but this?"


	7. Contact - Suspense at Fifty Feet

**Contact – Suspense At Fifty Feet  
**

* * *

**Written June 1****1****th****, 2020 – ****June 23****rd****, 2020.**

**Published June 28th, 2020.**

**A/N:**

**So when I said that I was going to quit publishing 'n stuff ****in the first week of July****, I didn't mean I would do it this month! Thankfully ****I'm still here for the regular bi-monthly Sunday ****publish, which I hope you guys enjoy. ****And if you feel starved for content, you can check out my profile. I've got seven other stories there currently, which I hope you enjoy. ****There is also a poll up where you can vote for which of my stories you like best.**

**To AppleTheAllwing, yes, I have plans for Peril, ****but no, she isn't coming into it just yet. You'll see. ****I suggest you make an FFN account so I can talk with you over PM, or join ****my ****D****iscord**** (the link to my server is in the first chapter's notes).**

**I've been blabbing too much. On to the story.**

* * *

**June 5****th****, 5,015: Somewhere in the Skywing Kingdom.**

If yesterday was filled with bad, today was depositing the worse. It kept raining all that morning, hot droplets splattering on their scales and granting neither comfort nor relief; only strength-sapping wet.

"Is there water in the tinderbox?" asked Byrd, addressing not Chervil but a soldier who was behind him. "Chervil is fire-starter now, see. Pass it down."

"Yes sir."

Slogging along at a slow pace, there was little need for a flame just yet, but it would be good to know if they could make one when they stopped for supper, before it was so dark the light would twinkle for miles and give away their position.

There was always a delay while the dragons of third company relayed the word and Chervil worked and found the answer. Presently a muttering came up the column.

"There's no wet in the tinder, but Chervil thinks the forest is so soaked we won't be able to start anything anyway."

He should've expected that.

"Never the easy way, always the hard way," he said, under his breath, but the dragons in his company nodded when they heard it. There was a slogan in that. Certainly Stinger must've felt so; his dragons were bedraggled and even more sorry than Byrd's were, with no one in a worse position than they were, which was sure to cheer them up (so Byrd sarcastically figured). The whole group was plodding along to the east of them, in the same valley, reduced to third company's strength and less morale. The whole dratted affair was taking on the feel of a boondoggle.

Byrd was in the habit of checking his pouch every so often, to see what was in it and figure how much the rest of his dragons had; he was low on ration bars again, not terribly low but more than he would've liked: what little he had fit in the bottom third of the pouch, and that was no food for someone of his height and his strength. Still, they had supplies brought along – pilfered, there was no other word for it, pilfered – from Smolderfax, and that was enough to last them for a day or two more.

He was guiding them along with his compass for direction and astrolabe for latitude, and instructing them to use the instruments so they knew how, but there was some who were tagging along and never looking down to check which way they were going; not because they were disobeying orders, but because they had no compass.

When he grew exasperated of this he wheeled about and asked them, 'why are you losing your compasses?'

"There were two lost in the river," they said, "but in yesterday's spat we lost another one; cracked at the pivot, and perfectly useless."

So he could not fault them for that: lives took precedent over equipment, but the equipment was still valuable, for Hivewings had no direction-sense in this strange land, or if their hearts said one thing reality told them another, and they were left with only an incipient idea of where they were.

In time they flew to a fork in the valleys; they could turn left, and go almost directly west, or turn right and go straight north, along the coast and into the zone of the other companies driving forwards into the new land. The view from the bluff must be commanding; there were soot lookouts up there most likely – and there was the third option; they could go forward on their course; take their supper on the hill and then move on, if the soots had not yet seen them.

"The days have been filled with action since we got here," said Byrd, while his eyes were scything left to right, left to right.

"What do you think?" he asked Monarda. "West leads deeper into the country, but there's a palace I saw up north, and -" he raised his spyglass to ensure it was something real and not an artifact of the imagination brought about by the rain "a glimmer of water."

"North, to scout," said Monarda, not bothering (for the moment) to explain her reasoning. Byrd raised and lowered his head, seeking different angles.

"Over the hill then," he said. "Our current course seems the best. Fill your canteens in the stream here! We won't be getting much water in the highlands!"

These last sentences were directed to the body of the company. Soon there were Hivewings dipping canisters in the running blue stream, dappled by the small ripples of the rain droplets hitting the water with quiet _spl__oops _that mobbed together and became a racket. Then they scaled the ridge and set to eating a quick supper, with the sullen faces of second company nibbling at the edges of their provender a few dozen yards away.

"Sir!" It was Bolt. "I've got something; some tracks."

"Wandering off again?" said Byrd, but he stood up nevertheless, and wound a path through the birches to see what Bolt was talking about, striped bark sloughing on his shoulders as he went. There was an irregular outcropping of rock on the western side of the cliff, hard-faced and white and dirty-white and speckled with black and connected patches of reddish feldspar, and soaked with water in small hollows, pooling in clear puddles which looked refreshing to drink. But that was not what Bolt meant. Instead he pointed to four-taloned prints in the mud with his forearm while he clung to a tree. It was only now that he was close that Byrd smelled it; the wind had been blowing eastward, and though he could've been within fifty yards of this he never would've scented it.

"No Hivewing made those," he said. "Soots."

"They can't be more than a few hours old, or they would've been washed out by the rain," said Byrd. "How'd you find this?"

"I saw the rocks and I was curious about the view, and then I was curious about whether anyone else had used the view, so I checked it out and there the tracks were."

Bolt's inquisitive personality paid off once again.

"Excuse me a moment," said Byrd. He trotted back the way he'd come until he could see the backs of the dragons of third, relishing their meal, for they knew another would not come for a long while, and then drew closer, and closer, and was remarked at last about fifteen yards before he came into the ring.

"Post a better guard when you're having meals," he said, again disappointed. "You can't forget the sentries, even if it is good to have food in your belly."

Belatedly dragons got up and stood lookout each way.

"That's a warning to you," said Byrd. Seeing that they were almost done, he added, "Follow me, quietly and carefully."

They stuffed the rest of their rations in their mouths and got up one-by-one, each not wanting to seem lazy to his fellows but also wanting to enjoy a second more of sweet rest, and, folding the lookouts away from their post, came along with him to where Bolt was – or should've been. The soot tracks were there, and Byrd's prints came up, muddled about beside them, and then went back, but there was no Bolt or trace of Bolt. Byrd stood for a moment, puzzled.

"He must have followed the tracks," he said under his breath, and led the whole troop along with him. So they went, with the soldiers sending stones skipping down the sheer cliff and stepping on sticks which cracked loudly and breaking brush branches with much snapping of the boughs and much hissing of leaves being displaced by conspicuous orange-striped bodies. At any rate, Bolt's scent was coating the trees all along the path; he was a smaller dragon than the others, and better fitted to that sort of thing, though the trunks were bent sideways where he'd passed and the roots were protruding from the wet ground like grass shoots. Byrd slapped mud all over himself as if he were bathing in water, and the others did this a little, but it was a decidedly conspicuous party which crept through the woods that dreary, itchy afternoon.

Ahead they saw bits of orange moving in the trees, and ducking and weaving beneath the canopy, furtive, as if not wishing to be seen. Third company raised their weapons and stilled themselves, and prepared for battle, then lowered them. Byrd would've been feeling rather silly too, if he had not at first recognized the flitting manner as Bolt's, and waved off his dragons at the last moment before they might have skewered a friendly.

"Report," said Byrd, whispering. "Quietly now; the woods have ears."

Bolt dropped to the ground and there was a splattering of mud; indeed, the dragon was coated in it up to his hocks.

"A gaggle of soots up ahead, twenty or so – three-twenty on your compass, if you point the needle north. They looked confused, didn't spot me."

"They might not know where we are," said Byrd. "Press on; half of you camouflaged and half of you badly camouflaged."

So far they had not seen any large enemy groups, and this, combined with the element of surprise, foisted a queer irreverence of the enemy on Byrd. There was one group of them which he truly respected, but most of them were dead now, and the dragons they were currently fighting were – competent, but not good enough to stop him in his tracks. So he thought.

At any rate, they were drawing near the spot Bolt had told them of now, and if they had not had him they had their noses and their eyes, for the spoor of scent led straight and true, and the trail was hot.

Now and then a dragon would hop on three legs, scratching, but the noise was more subdued now, and no one dared breathe a word: the mission was of such portent nobody wanted to spoil it. They were going along the side of the ridge, where droplets joined and made trickles, and trickles came together in fans and formed temporary brooks, and the brooks flowed down well-worn ravines they all had to cross unobtrusively, two dragons at a time, for more than forty of them.

And where was second company? Creeping around the sides? Going their own way? Sitting pretty? Probably nursing casualties. But bad communication on Byrd's part meant thirty able dragons who might've been able to provide backup were unaware of the imminent action. That was squarely his fault.

Now he saw russet scales through the leaf canopy, heard faint muttering waft to his ears and knew they were close to the enemy camp.

Unlike Stinger, the enemy posted forward sentries, and now there was a rustling in the woods, much quieter than third company's, but audible. They kept moving, quicker now, and with their heads farther up, trading vision for stealth. Still the brown trunks obscured any movement beyond a few hundred yards: a tactical nightmare but for the ridge being only a few hundred yards wide. So that helped.

A rush of wings filled the air with sudden fluttering, and third company paused, waiting, listening, until it had quieted, and then picked up the pace again, faster now. They burst into a meadow and found some hastily abandoned leaf-beds where soots had lain by the scent of it, but nothing else. The enemy had packed up his paraphernalia and was gone.

"Looks like they cut and run, sir," said a soldier. "No worries."

"Get some flank lookouts, and someone above the canopy, and hold weapons at the ready," he said.

'Somebody' meant him, it turned out; he had the only spyglass in the company and he was almost the only dragon who knew how to use it. He hovered with the wet tree boughs tickling his claws, and again swept the horizon with his detailed gaze. But the enemies had disappeared into the dark trees, and with their superior speed could come back at their leisure while third company beat the bushes, if they would. But it was getting too late to do so, and that would waste energy. Byrd reckoned on them coming to him.

"They'll come back," he shouted down from the canopy. "Run the swiftest of you to bring second company up here, and we'll make camp in this spot."

"Yes sir."

Wearisome travel; a drink, a supper, a hunt, some creeping, a rush and more creeping, and at the end of it disappointment that there'd been no combat and relief that none of his dragons had died. He felt he'd learned something, even if it was impossible to know exactly what. There was a jumble in his head, a puzzle to be solved. He hadn't sensed it until recently. He didn't know how large it was, or even if he had all the pieces. Once they clicked, something would changed, but for now, July fifth was coming to an end, and Byrd was letting it go.

Stinger wasn't. Second company muttered despondently amongst themselves long into the night, and ever anon they would cast glances at their brethren encamped on the rocks. Glances they aimed mostly at him.

Nobody asked for a tune.

* * *

_**July 9**__**th**__**, 5,015: the Icewing Palace.**_

"The Ring of Benighted Nobles has sent a petition asking you to repeal the temporary rebuilding powers, ma'am," said her cousin, Hailstorm.

Queen Snowfall took the scroll into her silvery talons and clipped it to the reading desk: a Sandwing innovation Blaze still occasionally used, when she paid visits to the Kingdom. It was Snowfall's to use now, and in her opinion it ought to stay that way. The black, engraved metal and finished wooden stand contrasted sharply with the angular geometries of the gleaming royal chamber orthe frosted, snowflake-etched windows looking out on the foggy polar sea. The ocean roiled with whitecaps and the horizon was rough with icebergs and choppy waves which surged suddenly from the troughs and vanished as quickly as they came, to begin again cyclically.

Unnaturally frigid mist coiled from her jaws: breath colder than the ice it was breathed on, and she tipped her heavy crown back on her head. It was an ornament once too heavy for her, now the perfect size.

It also scared away every suitor who was more interested in her as a dragoness than in the power in the ornament.

"What next?" she asked. "They'll be asking to travel out of the realm without obtaining a mandate, approving projects without royal oversight."

Hailstorm gave her an affixed, blue-eyed glance that told her everything and nothing about what he was thinking.

"You are an odd dragon sometimes," she said, and Hailstorm swished his tail.

"How will you react?" he asked.

Ah, changing the subject.

"I reject it."

"You could stand down the army as a measure of good spirit. They've been asking for that."

"_Olethavies_," she said. "It is the Queen's will. Besides, if they were to achieve their agenda, they would be out of my control."

Hailstorm bit his lip, which was most unbecoming of a member of the royal family. Then he nodded.

"That they're allowed to ask questions is a sign of the times."

He did not indicate whether he believed this to be good or bad.

"The whole world, out of touch with the monarchy. My mother lost the trust of the lower-ranked and the peasantry." she said.

"It doesn't help that Glacier died off instead of you killing her. For what end do you need their trust, though?" asked Hailstorm. "You are the Queen, you already have plenty."

Snowfall flexed her talons.

"There was so much out of my control when I was a dragonet, out of Glacier's control, and look how it turned out for her. If they're not bound to my word, something bad will happen, I know it."

"It's not the feeling of power?" asked Hailstorm.

Snowfall paused.

Hailstorm pressed on.

"It's alright to let the people have some autonomy. They need it. It's not healthy to be power-hungry. I'm looking out for you."

"That's what a disingenuous dragon would say," said Snowfall.

"Don't be paranoid," said Hailstorm. "There was a Queen who was paranoid, power-hungry and self-centered, and she was Scarlet."

"We're not talking about Scarlet," said Snowfall. "Either you look over this petition with me, or you leave."

Hailstorm exhaled a heavy breath through his nostrils.

"I'll stay."

"Good."

The two cousins waded through a moment of tense silence, Snowfall unwinding the leaves of the scroll and Hailstorm looking at it, though his gaze skimmed the writing. He tapped his claws.

"There was another thing."

"Get on with it," said Snowfall, her eyes glued to the parchment.

"The Skywings are asking for military aid."

Snowfall bit her lip, then stopped when she realized she was doing it.

"They are?"

"Their messenger didn't put it that way, but yes."

"Oh, the high-and-mighty Skywings want our help," said Snowfall. "Humiliating."

A low chuckle grew in Hailstorm's throat.

"Will you make pomp over it?"

"No, I won't," said Snowfall. "I won't help them at all."

"And miss a chance to lord it over our ancient rivals?"

At long last Snowfall looked up from the scroll, into his eyes with her blue irises, with her crown halfway slipped down her horns.

"Tsk, tsk. Why render them aid? It might turn out to be bad, and we could be dragged into another war. On the other talon, it might be nothing, and we'd be giving another tribe our resources. I'm afraid we'll have to let them beg."

Hailstorm thought for a moment.

"It could be bad… the Skywings have never asked for help before."

"Their martial culture is too proud," said Snowfall. She rolled up the scroll and slid it onto the reading stand, done with it already. "But it's not my problem. I want you hunting with me tomorrow morning. I'm going for bear. Any talk of Skywings is strictly forbidden."

"Alright," said Hailstorm, still oscillating his head as he worked the problem back and forth in his mind. "I do say – I do say. It's funny of them to ask."

"I said -"

"Yes ma'am."

She turned away from him and studied the frosty windows and icy cliffs beyond. It was his cue to go, and his talons clicked as his tail swept the glittering floor behind him and he slipped between the walls of the ornate arch leading into the royal chamber. Built for Glacier, it was larger-than-life: two dragons his size could easily walk abreast inside.

No wonder the crown didn't fit Snowfall too well.

A pang of hurt ate at his heart, and he stopped. Winter; Winter was the one who always accompanied him when they passed the gate. The halls of the palace were empty without his brother, as difficult as the younger prince could be. Winter was off with that scavenger sanctuary somewhere, with all sorts of foolishness. The dragon had better be alright – but then, Winter was the one who'd come and saved his tail, so perhaps he didn't have much to worry about.

Hailstorm treaded the corridors and jumped a dozen yards off an ice ledge, slowing his fall with his wings before he hit the floor below, which his talons dug into with a thunk and a scratching from the ridges on his claws catching and preventing a painful spread-eagle. A few paintings lined the walls; twice their number in bulls', boars' and bears' heads were mounted on metal hooks, the trappings of Icewing conquest. From a girdle he removed a keyring and spun them in his talon, brittle metal clinking in the sub-zero temperatures, inserted one into a lock and turned.

It didn't budge.

He was always fooled by the silver key.

This time the door swung open with a rasp and he stepped inside. Technically there was another entrance to this chamber – but that was guarded by armed sentries and was rather inconspicuous anyway, being chiseled into the side of the cliff as it was. The Skywing inside didn't know there was a second way out, but she didn't know the door was locked, either.

"Hello hello Avalanche," said Hailstorm. The courier was big and red and could snap his neck if he let his guard down, but she wouldn't try, not while there was peace in Pyrrhia still. "You get to go home."

His nonchalant manner conflicted with the earnest way she bored her eyes into the wall, the stone one over the fireplace, one of the few in the palace, for guests. Few ever came. The blaze crackled and spit sparks; warm for Hailstorm, uncomfortably cold for her.

Avalanche rose to her talons, gave him the thousand-yard stare. Hailstorm knew that look.

Battle fatigue.

"I'll escort you through the Kingdom," he said. "Here's the bracelet for the Ice Cliff – there are sentries on top of it who'll remove it from you after you cross."

He tossed it and she caught the thing with the same sound grain made when it hit the bottom of a metal container; a rattle. She shrugged.

"All the same to - tome. And my message?"

His voice cracked and mist poured from her jaws when he uttered the words.

"Snowfall will not render aid."

She sighed.

"She is sure?"

"Yes. You coming?"

Hailstorm went out the door again and she followed, stopping every few seconds for the shivering spasms brought on by the cold. In this halting manner they gained one of the towers, and then took off south, wings plying the air currents at the lower altitudes where the air was slightly warmer and the rocky terrain offered some protection from the wind. He ought to be back at the palace by tomorrow morning.

This was too long of a trip to accomplish in one day, or even two.

But he was pushing the boundaries here, seeing what Snowfall would stand for. As the miles slid by he noticed things. Avalanche was an older dragon; old enough to be his mother… she was someone's mother, to one of those backup Talons of Peace dragonets.

Remarkable.

Night was looming on the eastern horizon; arctic night, the sort of thing Icewings relied on the glow globes for. Too much. His night vision (he knew from experience) was awful. He ought to be going back. And he would. He had not the urgency behind him which drove dragons ever onward, past the conventional limits of endurance.

"I've got to return to the palace," he said, when they reached a small alcove, perhaps a third of the way there. Perhaps it was a dumb idea to let a Skywing have the bracelet – but there was no possible way for her to skirt the Ice Cliff in her state, or make it over without the sentries noticing and taking it off her.

So he thought.

"You will not reconsider?" asked Avalanche.

"It's – it's too farfetched. A new tribe invading the Seawing kingdom and the Skywings barely holding on, and the Mudwings being beaten back – it sounds fantastic," he said. But his heart was leaning in a different direction.

"Maybe that's because it's true."

He spread his wings. "With all due respect… no."

"When they get here, you will understand. There will be more requests on your kingdom in the days to come."

It was not so bad dealing with dragons like Avalanche as it was tiptoeing around Snowfall's annoyance when they came. He bowed and took off, leaving the Skywing a lonely dot on the darkening landscape of the tundra.

The tale could be right. There could be a war going on three or four thousand miles away, far beyond his reach. But it also wasn't going to affect him – probably. At any rate, he'd have to hurry if he wanted to make it back in time to catch five minutes of shuteye.

* * *

**July 9****th****, 5,015: ****Somewhere in the Rainwing Kingdom.**

'No sleep for the restless' the sign might've advertised. 'Bravery takes commitment', it might've said on the other side, in wartime, during the beginning of the war when enlisting was still a choice and not something forced onto dragons by the military. Instead, on the quiet and unobtrusive poster tied to the jungle tree was painted (in small letters) 'Learn Self Defense' and 'Protect Your Loved Ones from Thieves at Large'. But the reasons for its existence were far from innocent, and so was the battle over its right to remain.

"Moons," said Fatespeaker, between bites of a mango. She was looking up at the metal placard withtongue-in-cheek, next to a bright, colorful and grown-up Kinkajou. The Nightwing closed her eyes. "I prediiiiiict… another war."

"Just because we'll have an army doesn't mean there'll be a war," said Kinkajou. "Maybe it'll be like a reserve, where they talk about tactics and strategy like lounge generals and play nine-pins. That's what this seems like to me."

"You're too young to know stuff," said Fatespeaker. She took another bite, chewed, and spat out the pit. It whished into the dark forest below, till there was a crunch and a rustling. Then the Nightwing swallowed. "Nobody wants another army."

A pause.

"I know bad things happen, but I want to see the best in the world," said Kinkajou, her scales shifting away from the raspberry-lemon color they usually were and towards a somber purple.

"You never will, if Glory stays in power," said a voice from behind them. A sickly sweet scent filled the air, and wafting beneath it the earthy smell of decaying leaves. Kinkajou put a claw to her nose bridge, partially because of the odor, partially because this was one of the few dragons who made her genuinely annoyed.

Fruit Bat.

"How nice to see you," said Fatespeaker. Either her nose didn't work or she was the shining icon of self-control. "I propheesssy…"

"A prophecy about me? I'd love to hear it, but I'm too busy educating you two."

Kinkajou nodded along.

"A little birdie told me Glory has an inkling to get involved in another war."

"No, never," said Fatespeaker, at the same time Kinkajou said 'That would be like Glory' in an admiring voice.

"It would be positively horrid," said Fruit Bat. "Death and destruction and not enough sun time."

And Fatespeaker chuckled.

"Who is it she's going to fight?" asked Kinkajou. "And why didn't she tell me?"

"I don't know the answer to either of your questions," said Fruit Bat. "I didn't bother to know. But I'm going to bring it up before all the Rainwings and Nightwings in this forest – I'll be in the right and she'll be in the wrong, and once she's gone you'll all love me again."

"Ahuh," said Kinkajou.

"What, you think I'm lying?"

"And why shouldn't I?"

"Because I'm right this time. And that sign is evidence to prove it."

A nearby dragonet yawned and a fly went into his mouth. He ran off to find a stream and wash out the bug guts – but his parents stayed and watched.

Instituting an actual parenting system had been a good thing.

"Even if Glory does want a war, I'm sure she's in the right," said Kinkajou.

"We'll see who has the moral high ground, in the end," said Fruit Bat. She spun about and disappeared into the forest.

"That is a good question, didn't Glory tell you? I thought you were friends?" asked Fatespeaker.

"Hush," said Kinkajou. "I bet that old Queen is just trying to rile me up by inventing things."

But the seed of doubt had been planted in her mind.

"Do you think she's popular enough to pull it off?" asked Fatespeaker. "I mean, everybody here knows she lied during the queen contest."

"Yeah," said Kinkajou. "Who would believe her?"

"Somebody very forgetful indeed."

"Do you think it might be a good idea to ask Glory, just in case?"

"If you get around to it."

They chuckled and flew off, leaving behind a wooden placard and an invitation to join the Rainwing Self-Defense Corps.

Abruptly the old new order of the rainforest was being stamped out by the new one; the system, whether Fatespeaker saw this or not, was about to change. The young Nightwing often did have dreams, dreams which came true half the time. But she didn't spout off prophecies like Moonwatcher did, or read people's minds the way Moon was mystically able to, and so believed she didn't possess the the smidgeon of ability within which had been locked up like money in a deposit box; perfectly useless to anybody. Society went on, slowly reshaping into a new form, so subtly its inhabitants hardly noticed until the changes presented themselves at once, and left the elder generation feeling cut off from the younger.

The shadow of an invisible Rainwing playing tag darted between the dappled shade caused by the leaves. Fatespeaker noticed it go, and wondered who the dragon was who made it. That was the great secret – the thing Rainwings never mentioned to anybody, though it was discernible to the thinking Nightwing – a Rainwing could not become transparent.

Kinkajou dived off the platform suddenly, yellow scales and pink spots vanishing to the eye when she cut through a sunlit flower meadow. Fatespeaker followed more clumsily than the Rainwing, ducking trees and bulling a path through the rainforest such that a shower of twigs rattled the ground behind her. They were going away from the center of the village, away from the throne. If Kinkajou was trying to find Glory she was taking the long way about it.

But no – they burst through a canopy of vines and into a small, brown hut without a roof, with slugs crawling about on the woven fibers which made up the floor, and the ropes which hung the structure from the towering branches of a nearby tree. There was a scent in here, of Rainwing, not Kinkajou's, but fresh; of a dragon recently departed or lingering close by.

There was a shadow in the center of this place, sitting dragon-shaped seemingly without a body to cast it, with its neck-fans fluttering. That was why Fatespeaker had seen it. Kinkajou hopped nearer and poked the air, and suddenly her talon was batted away and Glory appeared mid-stroke.

"Glad to see you," she said, and Kinkajou sat thoughtfully while Fatespeaker and Glory shook talons. "I haven't seen you in a while, and I didn't expect you to be in the rainforest," she said of Fatespeaker.

"I came here just recently, and I thought you were gone, so I didn't come see you till now," said the Nightwing.

"I was in the Skywing kingdom a few days ago, went up without much fanfare and came back with considerably more, if I'm reading the look on Kinkajou's snout."

Kinkajou nodded. "Is it true you're going to start a war and there's going to be death and destruction and frightful things? I know you'd be in the right if you did but are you?"

"And where did you learn that?" asked Glory.

"Fruit Bat. She said a little birdie told her."

Glory snorted. "Of course he would, she has him wrapped around her hind-talon," she said. "Fruit Bat is right that I want an army – it's a preparedness thing at this point, against an enemy we don't much about yet, and the sooner we get one the better for the rest of Pyrrhia. But remember what Moon said?"

"Another one of her prophecies from a few years back? That one didn't come true."

Glory sighed. "Well, it will, and it is right now."

"Then why don't you run with that?"

"Because nobody wants another war, and nobody wants another prophecy. Prophecies bring ruin."

"Do you want another war?"

Glory stood up and paced, then quit pacing and was still, for she must not have wanted to seem nervous.

"I think," she said, "that it doesn't matter if want one or don't this time. It's like when the Nightwings came – we didn't start if dragons were dying and you could do something to save them?"

The answer was prompt.

"Save them," said Kinkajou. "It's the right thing to do."

"What if it would cost Rainwing lives?"

A pause.

"I'd still save them."

"What if you don't like them?"

"Does that matter?"

"No," said Glory. "Because saving them is in the right."

Fatespeaker broke in. "But from what?"

"The dragons in Moon's prophecy."

It was always 'Moon's prophecy'. Never hers. That was the way the world worked now, and had, and would. If there was latent future-casting skill within her, now would be a great time for it to come out.

"Fruit Bat doesn't want us involved. And she speaks for the rest of them in that, doesn't she? Even after four years of growing a backbone, most of us don't have it," said Kinkajou, and then; "I don't want to fight, either."

"There's an old saying. You know how it goes. When they come for us, there'll be nobody left to stand up for us."

Kinkajou took a step back, and Fatespeaker breathed heavier at her side.

"But throwing untrained Rainwings at them… that would be wrong too," said Glory. "And so now I have to wait and deal with politics and turn our people into soldiers – something I never wanted – and by the time they get there the rest of Pyrrhia might be dead."

"We could go invisible, creep around and do whatever we can."

Glory sighed. "Not while we're sleeping. Not when we haven't had enough sleep. Chameleon couldn't. He had insomnia. No excuse for what he did to you, but he did."

Pale white crept into Kinkajou's scales.

"I have Deathbringer poking around the edge of the rainforest, learning what he can, seeing if they'll come for us or ignore us."

"Good idea, knowing more," said Fatespeaker. "Where is Moon, anyway?"

"In the Sandwing kingdom, the last I heard, with Qibli and Thorn."

"Do you think she'd know?"

"I don't know what she knows. I'd give a great deal to find out."

Fatespeaker took a breath. "You might be reacting to nothing."

"There's something out there," said Glory. "Whoever is invading Pyrrhia needs to go, and it needs to be us, because Thorn, Snowfall – they'll never react until it's too late."

"And the Skywings?"

"In too bad a spot to help anyone but themselves."

Glory had set herself on a track to war, and there was no derailing her. Fatespeaker could jump on the bandwagon and be dumped when it overturned – or stay behind and miss out on the most interesting foray of her life because she lacked conviction.

"I expect Fruit Bat will be telling everyone who cares to listen tall tales, and sowing dissent," said Fatespeaker. "Should you put a stop to it?"

"I could," said Glory, "But I won't. Let time be the judge, and Fruit Bat will lose in the court."

"And shutting her up would mean you were just like her," said Kinkajou. "So I'm glad you won't."

"No, if only for that reason I won't."

"Then how to convince them?"

Glory paused. A minute passed, and Fatespeaker rapped her talons on the soft structure of the open platform, but the queen was still, under control, wearing a mask which only Deathbringer could peel away. An image flashed before her, four Rainwings and a Nightwing slipping through the jungle in single-file – the semblance of an idea, if so fleeting it disappeared before she could chase it down the rabbit hole from which it had so suddenly come. But it stuck in her brain, and -

"Watch out!"

Kinkajou pulled her talon and she came away from the edge of the platform and the danger of falling seventy feet to the ground below.

"Are you alright?" asked Glory. "You nearly toppled."

"I'm fine," said Fatespeaker, brushing off nonexistent dirt with her front talon. The motion obscured the fact that her arm was shaking. "But I had an idea."

Kinkajou looked up at her; the younger dragon was two talon-widths shorter. "What?"

"Take a couple of Rainwings outside the rainforest – under Deathbringer's supervision, of course – and show them what's going on out there."

A pause.

"You're Glory. It's hard to imagine you not taking a chance."

"I can't think of anything better," said Glory. "And I trust them enough; these are the same dragons who incapacitated half of Fatespeaker's tribe in the volcano business."

"I was hoping you wouldn't bring that up," said Fatespeaker.

"To me it seems that if I hadn't nobody would have."

"For reasons," said Kinkajou. "Nobody knows what reasons." She half-smiled. The memories still bothered her at nights.

"They're not soldiers, though," said Glory. "That's my worry, that they'll all get slaughtered because they don't know what to do."

Fatespeaker didn't know if she'd know what to do, or what there was to do when fighting other dragons except hit them over the head, then fly away fast before they woke up, hopefully getting up far enough away by the time that happened she was untraceable. If it got more serious than that, she was out of her depth.

"I have a feeling I should've listened to Deathbringer more when he was talking about defense techniques," she said. "I thought it wasn't important at the time."

"He always comes prepared," said Glory.

"And Ruby told you about all these things?"

"She didn't, but she believed Eagle when he told us," said Glory. "Considering what she is and where she came from, she did quite well."

There was an odd quality with Ruby to do with the Darkstalker affair, but Fatespeaker had never been let in on it. "What?"

"Chameleon screwed her up pretty bad."

Perhaps Glory thought that was meaningful, but to Fatespeaker it revealed nothing and raised more questions.

"Long story short, she's more than she looks. I'm surprised she's not insane."

Kinkajou blinked. "I'd forgotten that part of the adventure, the whole thing was so surreal."

"You weren't around for it much. Chameleon and being knocked out and all."

"What happened to Ruby seems like normal life these days," said Kinkajou. "Months away from you guys. I don't know you could stand it."

"Guys, what happened to Ruby?" asked Fatespeaker.

Glory wasimpassive as usual, yet Fatespeaker sensed a careful considering of words.

"She changed her persona, or it was changed, and that caused a lot of personality conflicts."

There was an itch at the back of Fatespeaker's mind, like an intuition she rarely used was trying to give her information, with little success. Vague frustration arrived on the scene, combined with the achy beginnings of a headache which would leave her unresponsive for hours.

_'She changed her persona, **or it was changed**, and that caused a lot of personality conflicts.'_

What did Chameleon have to do with all this? Scarlet was dead, but what she'd done during her lifetime surely caused massive changes in Ruby, but what Glory had said implied a reality darker than even she'd expected, and she'd grown up in hell. She shook her head. She'd already teetered at the edge of the platform once while thinking, and once more resisted the temptation to lose herself.

"I can arrange for Rainwings to go and check it out. More than five, fewer than fifteen," Glory said. "If you could interest any of your friends in the truth, Kinkajou, now would be the time. Has Fatespeaker come around?"

It was if she hadn't been mentally present for a while.

"I'm here, if that's what you mean," she said.

"It would be a good idea for you to go as well. The Nightwings trust you, don't they?"

Fatespeaker nodded. "Ever since I stopped talking seriously about visions."

"You don't feel like you have visions, do you?" asked Glory. There was a keen light in those eyes, one Fatespeaker wasn't sure she liked.

"No. Moonwatcher talked to me, and she doesn't either. I'm a perfect normal."

She laughed, and her sides vibrated. It was good to get that off her chest.

"Then quit falling off perfectly good decks, or we'll think you're hiding something," said Kinkajou. The Rainwing poked her in the black ribs. "I can't feel an animus artifact, but maybe I'm not looking hard enough."

They all chuckled.

"I'm certainly thankful you've managed to bring light to a gloomy conversation," said Glory. "I could rely on Deathbringer for all of these things, but I feel the people will trust their eyes and ears more than what they term a shady assassin."

"I imagine he's nice once you get to know him," said Kinkajou.

"Exactly," said Glory, and then her face subtly tightened and she pulled back her jaw in one of those 'wait-a-minute' looks she herself had provoked on so many other people. "Your sense of humor is getting more refined."

Kinkajou curtsied, the pink dots on her scales rippling as she moved and cast an elongated shadow in the golden light, considerably more evening-like than it'd been when she'd flown into the jungle hideaway. It was one of those evenings for laying back and enjoying life and casting an incipient glance at its layered lessons, not for strenuous talk of impinging wars and the troubled identities of queens.

Perhaps that last part would be good discussion during nine-pins, but nowhere else.

"It's getting late," said Kinkajou. "Rainwings aren't nocturnal, unlike a dragon I know about."

"What with the amount you sleep during the day I think you should be up with the moons," said Fatespeaker.

"Rainwings are active in the mornings," put in Glory. "More so than you would guess. But Kinkajou has a point. It would be a good idea for us to find dragons outside our social circles, dragons who wouldn't be accused of merely collaborating with us in a giant lie about what's going on outside the borders. Now, speaking of which, I'm wondering where Deathbringer is."

The queen tapped her talon, and Fatespeaker knew why. He always appeared right after he'd been mentioned; he was mentally incapable of doing anything other than produce drama. When he failed to appear she sighed.

"Looks like he's busier than we thought," said Fatespeaker. "Not getting into any trouble I hope?"

"He survived a continental war, multiple assassinations on others and what he tells me was a scavenger attempt on the life of his claws -" here Kinkajou choked as she tried not to laugh, "the Nightwing kingdom, and Morrowseer," said Glory. "I wouldn't worry about him too much."

Invisible as it was on her face or scales, the worry must have remained in Glory, secreted away in her heart. What the queen felt was told to few dragons, and then seldom and in hints.

"You're right. He'll be fine," said Kinkajou. She scurried up a branch and hung on the bottom of it, then blinked when she was pecked between the eyes by a territorial macaw. Even Glory had a grin on her face.

At times Fatespeaker wished it would be easier to forget life's troubles, but then she wasn't wishing anymore, because she'd already forgotten. For a moment the world was simple, reduced to the laughing Kinkajou suspended from the tree branch, the amused Glory and the fluttering squawks of the macaw steadfastly refusing to budge from its territory. Kinkajou could have snapped it up in an instant, yet she tolerated the colorful bird running about her in rushes, charging her and stopping a hair's breadth away from her nostrils, or pecking her neck with its hooked beak. Finally it decided she had been tamed and perched on her upside-down nose, preening its red wings.

Glory shook her head, still smiling, waited a minute, then brought them back to grim reality. "Too bad Fruit Bat isn't as easy to satisfy," she said. Fatespeaker realized how blessed she was, having the time to relax like she did. Glory couldn't enjoy a minute of peace without worrying. That was a trait of Glory, worrying.

"Would you like me to join you on the limb?" asked Fatespeaker, sidling up to the split in the tree where the branch formed.

"No, no, I wouldn't like to go through this fuss all over again," said Kinkajou. "Fruit Bat is pushy and she'll lie to get what she wants."

"Which is a chance to be lazy like I've been instructing our tribe not to be for four years," said Glory. "But her argument intersects with another, more valid point. People with less conviction than I will say that an invasion is the other queens' problem. Again, Fatespeaker's idea is the best one I can think of right now."

"Tomorrow?" asked Fatespeaker.

Glory nodded. "Get started finding people tonight, or the trip will get postponed. Deadlines have a habit of running away from you."

"That they do," said Fatespeaker. "When I was in the library…"

Poor Starflight, relieved of his agency just as he'd come into his own. He would've been great. Now he was a shell she'd partially succeeded to fill. He would never be the same again.

The evening was rapidly turning to night, the lively waving leaves above them as still as if they'd been carved from stone. Glory opened a wicker cabinet and took out a small device, cupped in a talon and impossible to see fully, then held it up to a basket hanging from a tree branch Fatespeaker had assumed was for food. There was a snick and sparks burst into the air, dancing like fireflies before they went out. A moment of darkness followed, and then the smooth flame of a torch bloomed from above them.

"I'm going to think here," said Glory. "You'd best get home, or everyone will be asleep."

"Or listening to the rhetoric Fruit Bat's spewing out," said Fatespeaker. "I used to think you Rainwings let her be queen because you were tired of her asking for the job. My opinion's changed, now. If she's not smart she's at least cunning."

And she needed a half hour in a dark place to herself, to help with this growing headache.

"Too cunning for her own good. There's more than one way for a cat to skin itself," said Glory, and then turned away. Kinkajou shrugged, then took off into the dark blue light, Fatespeaker not far behind.

* * *

**A/N: (Yeah I know it stands for Author's Note and there's no reason for the slash, but that's old Black and I wanted to keep it).**

**Well, good grief; I didn't expect to get so far so fast with this. Four chapters since I restarted this dead old thing? The surprises never end. A review of this story would be excellent, and those kind of things make my day. ****And, ****i****f you want to be part of the (small) community you can check out my discord at hittips colon slash slash discord dot gg slash nUDjBjB**

**A Writer's Harbor.**


	8. Contact - Sudden Meeting

**Contact – Sudden Meeting**

**AN:**

**A very short one, and a hurried one, but an author's note nonethless. To Unazaki: yes, the Rainwings are a sleeping giant, and yes, their abilities are overpowered somewhat, but, if you didn't notice, in the last chapter I made it so that they had shadows. I can't believe nobody else saw that before I did.**

* * *

**July 6****th****, 5,015: Somewhere in the Sky Kingdom.**

* * *

And just as the horrid weather had come to the brink of breaking his spirit, the clouds had been swept away by a refreshing southerly wind, and the rain abated. The overcast broke into individual cumulus, and in turn those raced away like scud, the bright light of the sun softened when the playful hazes sailed before it. It was a fortuitous turn of events for one such as Byrd, but a dangerous one as well. The increased visibility meant it would be easier for the enemy to spot them. This was what he was telling Bolt now.

"How much strength have they got?" asked Bolt. "We keep bumping into elements of soots. It seems to me they're everywhere."

"Maybe they patrol along the front," said Byrd. He was shouting over the buzz of the friendly wings. Bolt was intelligent for a dragon his age, if over-curious, and destined for promotion. It would be a good idea to teach the wing-com the lessons taught to cadets, which would save much trouble down the line.

"That's a lot of front."

That it was. But the soots were fast enough to make it work. Still, though, he thought he would've broken past their patrol pattern by now.

"They're good at battlefield security," he said. "I haven't seen a single support element this entire time. It's difficult. Say there's a thousand miles of front they have to protect. Say they have as many dragons as we do – a hundred thousand. But a good deal of that is noncombatants – engineers, signal people, couriers. Doubly so for the couriers for them. So maybe they have seventy thousand. I think far less. But maybe they have seventy thousand. That's seventy a mile… no, that doesn't make sense."

"One or two a mile, sir?" said Bolt. "In groups of forty or so."

They had not yet learned that the soots called their combat groups a sortie.

"Makes sense," said Byrd.

They flew on, scattering the gnats which dizzily buzzed about the bushes situated on the bank of a rippling brook.

"What if there wasn't a front?"

Byrd blinked and looked at his subordinate. Such a suggestion was beyond the pale. If an army didn't have a front and a system to support that front they'd lost before the beginning of the war. A lesser enlisted dragon in Bolt's place would've dismissed the statement as idle musings, but the young soldier had tenacity.

"I don't mean if there wasn't a defense at all, only thinking that there might be an alternative to the, to the conventional sense. We ran into a few of their lookouts yesterday, right? And they bugged off, right?"

Byrd nodded.

"So they went to warn their main combat group of where we were. But we don't know where their main combat group is. They could have battalions in reserve spaced out, oh, every fifty miles."

"Fifty miles? I can do the math and that's not a lot."

"But suppose they had lookouts every twenty miles or so, in pairs or threes. Then when they see enemies, one goes off and warns the battalion while the other tracks, and then maybe one splits off a couple days later for an update or whatever or something like that."

Byrd was beginning to have a sinking feeling.

"Then they vector the battalion onto us and boom, a hundred and fifty versus eighty, even if our side has the same number of dragons per mile. That's the way it seems to me, sir."

"Good grief," said Byrd. "And if they're doing that, they have the advantage, or at least they don't have a disadvantage."

"We could beat it if we could go faster than them, get out of their track before they could react, since even at their speed it would take a day and a half or three to get eyes on us, send word, mobilize the reserves, correct their course to where we are rather than where we were, and make a battle plan. But us Hivewings in a race against even the slowest soot -" here Bolt shook his head. "We'd lose by a mile."

"Where'd you get the idea for that kind of warfare?"

Bolt hummed. "I was watching the bees and the way they find all the best flowers."

For a moment they went on, Byrd feeling grim, examining his combat experiences so far and looking for an answer to a problem vaguely defined. There was that time he'd killed two soots – one hesitated after the death of its compatriot, then charged, too late. The enemy's hesitation was much like his reluctance to change his course now, even whilst the threat of a superior force vectoring him was hanging overhead like the blade of a guillotine. There was a crucial element he was missing; his failure to sound it out was reflected in his occasional grunts about the chatting going on in the group about how far they'd go north before the next reading of the astrolabe.

It was as if there was a mental process going on in everyone's head, feeding off of normal situations, good or ill, deciding what to do and when, and explaining why. If a strange event occurred to throw off the process, either it was rejected, or the convoy of thought was knocked off course for a while until it could find its way again.

He had been dangerously close to the former reaction. Now he was experiencing the latter.

So what threw the mind from its wheel-ruts? Bad things? Perhaps.

But beyond worrying about the enemy, he had to manage his company as well.

They flew on, and on, and on, with the sun their pacemaker. Accursed, it fell too soon when he was not looking, and gave him no time to prepare night camp, or else was affixed to its portion of the sky overhead, when he was worried about detection or using it to keep time. It shone on the bottleflies circling over the cattle corpses, and made their black bodies shine purple and blue, and beat down like a killing star on the Hivewings, who were unused to living outside their hives, and paid the price for their softness. It made the animals act strangely; a few more than others. Most laid up in the wood, or held court near the streams, their torpid movements economic, to avoid creating too much heat on that hot, hot summer day. Soldiers had no such luxury.

Byrd's scales felt cool to him, yet he knew they were blazing. His stomach doubled up in knots like it had that time he'd had an intestinal bug as a dragonet – those many times. He was on the verge of heatstroke, though he was flying forty feet in the air, and durst not call a rest for another ten miles, at least. It would be one hell of a time for the soots to ambush them, with him in his state and Stinger's group beaten out of fighting trim.

The enemy were laid up in the shade, however, or deciding what to do as they followed third company.

"Higher by fifty!" ordered Byrd. He wanted a respite, away from the awful heat and the humidity which the trees exuded into the air.

"Higher by fifty, sir," was the reply. They all gained a span of altitude, and that was enough for him. He suspected, too, that Chervil had been about to fall behind.

Poor dragon! Did he like the favor of third company so much that he would torture himself just trying to keep up? The soldier was going to pull a muscle at this rate, and his teeth clenched every time he used the wing near his cut. He had three others to take up the slack, but that only strained them. Byrd was looking forward to a good rest before their next deployment, for his soldiers' sake.

And that brought another thing to mind. Were they recon? - or had the brass looked at the map and seen a useful Hivewing element with speed and striking power and decided to use them as regular soldiers? A recon battalion did not bring a dedicated medical element; no surgeons, nothing more serious than a first aid kit and twist tourniquets. Most of them knew little about the arcane yet deadly mumbo-jumbo called infection; Chervil had to discover that first-talon (though mostly he'd gotten over the unpleasant experience).

Snouts flushed and hearts beating like thunder, with all too light provisions banging away from unwieldy canvas haversacks at their necks, they flew in a flat wedge, like geese. With scales filled with mud and grease and grime, and the occasional squashed mosquito - "Mosquito? Don't look like a mosquito to me. It's a skeeter," Chervil would say – they flew. Their eyes scanned the horizon warily, their gazes ran up the bluffs and down again, and swept the forest around them for ambush.

The flat wedge formation made travel easier for everyone except point. It was useful – but it obstructed visibility looking to the inside, and made it possible for the left-side guys to be blindsided by an attack from the right, bogged as they were in this thick forest. That was why they usually assumed a crescent, or four or five-dragon groups when in combat.

The system could be made better. There was a solution out there in the world – moons knew the soots probably used it, the way they scooted around quicker than the eye could catch. For all the world Byrd was stuck on it. His mind went back to the earlier analogy of wheels stuck in ruts from which they could not get out. He was mired in one of those muddy tracks, spinning his spokes. Bolt was doing his job beside him, keeping both eyes open for trouble, spear never too far from claw – but it was at exactly these times that he was at his least insightful, though Stinger would've said it was when the soldier was doing his best.

Byrd looked over his shoulder again, glancing at the young subordinate, whose theory was too grim not to be true. If it was correct (and paranoia told him it couldn't be otherwise), they had a couple of hours, maybe a day before they were engaged, possibly from any direction, with the effective soot tactics.

He needed to throw the enemy for a loop, force back their thought processes and give Byrd the tempo. He put that idea in a mental drawer marked 'soon, but also later', and barked the order for descent. They set foot in a meadow near a stream, a rocky one, dotted with a plant Byrd was sure happened to have relations with the Pantalan poison ivy back home. The ground was virtually coated with thorns and prickly bushes otherwise, which were annoying on any continent.

"For any of you oddballs who like ration bars, make sure you eat the stuff we got from town instead," said Byrd. "How much of that is left, perchance?"

The dragons poked the slabs of beef they'd strapped to their sides, which were now brazenly sundried.

"Supper tonight and tomorrow's breakfast if we stretch it," said Chervil. "I wouldn't like to eat this by tomorrow afternoon."

There was a round of chuckling, and general agreement from all. It did not escape Byrd that Monarda stood close to the injured Chervil, who held court with quiet jokes in the middle of the thorny clearing.

"You said something earlier on, something about mosquitoes," said she.

In a company of misfits and killers, there was an element about that dragon Byrd did not like, or understand. He could be missing her personality – or he could be pinning it down exactly. She was like a multi-faceted gem which always seemed to have one more side than he could count, a psychopath who went out of her way to talk with Chervil.

"Skeeters," said Chervil. "Great big ones the length of your talon that suck all the blood out of ya and then cough up spit to give ya -" here he hocked up a loogie and spat the phlegm droplet on the grass, "a bump. Wait, no, that's what mosquitoes do. Skeeter loogies are venomous."

"I hate the wildlife here," said a dragon. His name had been Maven, hadn't it? Yes.

Bolt cocked his head at that, asked: "How come?", and soon the two were embroiled in a deep conversation of outdoors' merits, complete with a few others in the group diving into the discussion every so often with a remark or two, then coming out later with a confused expression on their faces. Byrd noted with pleasure that eight dragons were already flying about up top, their eyes peeled for threats, without him having to tell them to do so.

They did not, however, protect against animals. A tiny mammal wandered into the clearing, half-hidden by the scrub, brown on its back and light brown most everywhere else, with white streaks between the two color tones, and a hint of black as well. It seemed like a more brightly colored squirrel, one of those animals which are always lively and hopping or skittering about on four legs and standing up and looking about on two with their bushy tails twitching behind them.

This one was quite sick, shambling along and looking about as if it didn't know where it was. Byrd could not get its scent from where he was, upwind, nor did he know its particular ailment, having lived a sheltered life in the Hives, even if it tended toward the exploratory by Hivewing standards. The small thing – it was about the length of his talon – scrabbled up a rock and then disappeared beneath the spines of a six-foot tall thorn.

\- "And that's why it's a good idea to pay attention to the flora," Bolt was saying. The dragon lay back in the meadow, waiting coolly for the reply, unbothered by the sharp thorns and stinging nettles, which at worst were a minor irritation for dragons of their size, and scenery most of the time.

His competitor was thinking about his answer when suddenly his expression turned annoyed and he growled. "Something bit me."

Again he winced.

"That's it, little shit."

He reached down in the lush vegetation and pulled up the little rodent, which was snapping and biting and hissing, foaming at the mouth with unexpected rage for the dragons which had so rudely invaded the meadow. That was how Byrd saw it, at least.

"See ya, chucklefuck," said the soldier, and tossed the creature with a lazy swing of his arm. There was a hideous gnashing of teeth, and then a dull thud as it hit a tree trunk and went limp.

"As you were saying?" asked Bolt.

It was good to edify oneself, but Byrd had had enough. "Changing of the watch, you two," he said. "It's time to let the lookouts have their supper."

The two grunted, groaned, and fussed, but they moved alright, and before the eight watchers had hit the ground they and six others were circling overhead, their dirt-encrusted scales more a shadow than a shape, dappled by the leaves of the trees and the swiftness of their movement. The sentries were starved, more than starved, and yet they nibbled at the beef and lamb slowly, drawing out the experience as long as they could under Byrd's watchful eye. When he looked at them they would speed up, and yet in his peripheral vision they would go back to savoring. He couldn't keep them from wasting time that way, unless he ordered them to finish in five, but that might be counterproductive.

Leadership questions.

He oughtn't fret.

Meanwhile, the plan that had begun to foment just before supper had baked while he was eating, and by the time the rationed food was consumed his idea was well-done in the mental oven.

"OK, we're doing something different tonight," he said, casting a momentary glance at Stinger's group, who were barely visible through the trees a hundred yards away. His soldiers all gave him varying looks embedded with different emotions. Trust was one of them. Apprehension was another.

"Instead of staying here and setting a watch and flying off tomorrow morning, we're going to walk west by night and sleep a good part of the day, then ease back to a normal schedule over the coming couple of days. That's an order, and start moving."

Begrudgingly they got up from where they were lounging, packed up the compasses and souvenirs from town, and steeled themselves in their minds for the coming sojourn. Nobody wanted to be the first to say 'Slow down, sir', and so nobody would, not till they'd exceeded their limits many times over.

Hopefully that time would never come.

"And Monarda, go tell Stinger where we're going. Compass check!"

Those who were supposed to have compasses had them. There were two missing, each one intended to service four dragons, but there were three dead dragons who wouldn't be using them anymore, and so on the whole things were fairly balanced.

Bolt sidled up to Byrd as the whole shebang began to move off, first in ones and twos, then faster, in flights of four, crushing the scrub and blazing a trail through the brush as they flowed west between the deciduous tree trunks. The soldier was much like a younger brother; annoying at times with the way he seemingly wasted time or did dumb things in the name of finding out what would happen, but always imaginative and interested in what his elder was doing, and helpful. Now Byrd took a second out of his time to explain.

"We're doing something unexpected," he said. "I don't expect the soots think we'll break our pattern, and their scouts won't try to come close while they're tailing us. I'm acting on your hunch."

Bolt shrugged, glancing over his shoulder at the trodden-down bracken they were leaving behind them, and sniffing. The heavy product of built-up dragon-stink hung about them like a cloud, and would take a night rainstorm to wash away, one which they might get, or they might not. There was a pall on the eastern horizon, where the storms usually rolled in, and that was good for their purposes, but it might miss them.

Meanwhile, any stiff with a nose could follow them for miles, and they were going with the wind at their backs, which blinded them to the scent of anyone ahead.

That was the seamy underbelly of the good idea. Byrd hoped that blind luck and obliviousness on the part of the soots would aid his escape, and hopefully have them land in a different meadow than their evening camp. At this rate, though, they'd be twenty miles away by morning, and could then sneak back along their course and ambush the enemies who would've ambushed them.

"Is Stinger coming along?" asked Byrd.

Nobody heard him over the panting and the last buzzing of insomniac mosquitoes that hadn't gone to sleep yet.

"I said, is Stinger coming along?" he asked in a louder voice.

"Didn't see him, not me," came an answer from down the line, from the dragon Bolt had been arguing with. They were all staying together by sound, touch and scent. "Did any of you guys catch him leaving camp?"

"They were staring daggers at me when I left," said Monarda. "I didn't see his guys budge an inch."

"Looks like he's too busy sulking to move," said Chervil.

That was enough disparaging of Hivewings, irritating as their commanders might be.

"They have more casualties than we do," said Byrd. "Extra travel after an all-day flight would be dangerous for their health."

That made them shut up.

But the journey might be dangerous for his, too; the walking, leisurely by itself, was combined with twelve hours of prior exertion, and now a mild headache was banging away inside his skull due to the lack of sleep. The forty dragons melting through the dappled moons-light depended on him to come up with a battle-plan to keep them safe.

No, to win, he reminded himself, to win. Doctrine said they were expendable, all of them, even him, but the knot in his chest didn't see it that way. If ever he got a medal, it would be for protecting these guys, not killing the enemy.

He suspected the award would be posthumous.

No matter for him now. The bullfrogs croaked in the lowlands and the night-birds hooted. Several times he rocked in his tracks, talons splayed wide at the sound of an echoing screech reverberating in the night.

"Sounds like the soots are getting murdered out there," said Chervil, his ears swiveling towards the source of the screeches like a windmill trying to catch the breeze. Nobody wanted to think about what was happening if it wasn't the soots dying.

"Moreso the noise is coming from ahead," said Bolt. "It can't be Stinger."

The screaming would die away for a few minutes, then resurge as suddenly as it had gone, rattling nerves and curdling the red-black blood in their veins. Every shadow on the forest floor concealed a limber assassin; every snap of a broken stick entailed the creeping of a dozen cutthroats. Third company was getting jumpy on their night excursion. On one occasion the yelling happened right over Byrd's head, and he looked up to the boughs of the tree above him, expecting a soot to drop on his face and end his life.

Instead he saw a midget-sized owl, unimpressed with the six-ton monster a few feet beneath it, its feathers as gray as the hickory tree on whose branches it sat. Its beak opened an inch and its throat rumbled, and again came the raucous call.

"Alright, here's what we've been afraid of this whole time," said Byrd. He pried away the leafy branches obscuring the creature and its keen eyes. Forty dragons watched a screech owl preen.

"Moons, that little thing?" asked Chervil. "It doesn't look larger than a mouse!"

"What a load of big strong dragons you are, scared of a creature like that," said Monarda. She trotted on and put on airs, prim as a soldier can be, while the bird disdainfully preened crumbs of gray bark from its feathers and did its best to make them look foolish, and at long last beat its wings and flew off noiselessly into the night when it discovered it couldn't get a rise out of them anymore.

"Let it scare the soots out of their wits," she said. "I'm sure they'll appreciate it."

And Bolt fell back into the knot which had formed next to Chervil, and said, in a stage whisper which was just quiet enough for everyone to hear: "You're teaching her a sense of humor!"

Sarcastic killing harmonica-players were one thing. Making sure his company stayed together in the dark, sticky night was another. Counting off five minutes in his head, he would pause, listen, and look, go on, number five more, then repeat the performance. Going crazy from boredom was better than dying to an enemy they hadn't seen until too late, and it wasn't like this was ever going to get boring. He wished it would. He wished it wouldn't. They moved through the woods in pairs of pairs, clumped densely into a packet of dragons, as far as he could tell.

"Keep moving west," he told Monarda. "I'm circling around back."

He stepped offside of the company and let them pass on his left while he picked his talons on a mossy rock, then followed them to the best of his ability. It wasn't hard; they were making an awful racket which would've stood out to anybody, above the bullfrogs and the crickets blasting his ears with chirping. A deaf rabbit with earplugs would've heard the breaking branches and snapping twigs from a mile away; it would've been hard to get lost from his lot, but then, there were always dragons who could manage the most dimwitted feats.

Not in his company. Not after this.

A sound caught his ear and he crouched stock-still beneath the shade cast by a tree, the dappled leaves waving above the grass in a silver, moons-lit spot where a small hole opened in the canopy, illuminating a tangled mass of fruiting vines, speckled shadows crisscrossing its internal labyrinths. There was another dragon here, a being he could not see. Gradually he noticed slow, deep breathing, each exhale like a broad gust, held his breath and heard it go on.

An enemy, sent to spy out their bearings!

He closed his eyes and opened them again, the better for his night vision, and his sight was a tinge sharper, the gloom that much less impenetrable. There was an excrescence in the night, a mass where mass should not be, its outline impossible to make out because it existed in a patch of light and dark, and so dazzled him. Whoever it was had sensed him too, and was as still as it could be without being dead. How did Byrd move? How did he react? He had no friendly-or-foe on the guy, and he couldn't attack without knowing who it was he was attacking.

On the other talon, Monarda got further and further away the more he waited… he could hear the crashing of brush fade fainter and become more distant even now.

Boldly, peradventure foolishly, Byrd broke cover and trotted into the light, tearing the vines from his way. Slowly, grinning like an idiot and chuckling quietly, a soldier emerged from the dark, a Hivewing soldier, his sides still crusted with mud and his haversack dangling from his neck, as tall as Byrd, though lankier because of his younger age.

"Sir," he said, rapping his shoulder with his tail. There was a familiar quality to this dragon. Byrd sighed.

"It's not that funny," he said, and trotted off briskly in the direction of third company, nodding so his subordinate would follow him.

"I'm laughing at myself," said the dragon. The resemblance clicked in Byrd's mind. It was that guy Bolt had been arguing with, Maven by name. The soldier rasped his bitten appendage against a tree, then moved on.

"Still itching from that cut?" asked Byrd.

"More like aching," said Maven.

The crashing and breaking grew louder the more they trotted. They were headed in the right direction.

"That's bad," said Byrd, in a low voice not easily overheard. "Could be an infection."

"Frickin' wildlife," said the other.

"Language prevents you from expressing yourself. I suggest you find ways to say things other than using it."

Maven scowled, but perked up again when he saw they were nearing the group, who were strung out more than Byrd would've liked, but by no means in disarray. Their spoor of scent was

"Alright… Maven now. Stay close," said Byrd. He spoke now, slightly louder, his steady voice permeating the night. Too loud. "Byrd to third. I picked up a straggler."

"OK, we smelled you coming," said Monarda. "Join up."

"We will," said Byrd. "And be quieter, all of you. I could hear you from a mile off."

Byrd shook his head then. Dragons and their noses, and their loud traveling ways. He glanced at Maven when he left the guy in the middle of the formation. The soldier had never given him trouble before, had been an anonymous cog in the Hivewing machine. Now he was dropping out of formation. Byrd vowed to keep a closer eye on Maven, for the battlefield was no place to pick up bad habits. Often they had a habit – heh – of killing their practitioners.

Byrd's step dragged as his subconscious offered up a thought and his mind absorbed it. He was doing the exact same thing he'd criticized headquarters for making Thorn do… splitting forces. True, Stinger wasn't under his command, but did that make much difference? Once separated in this wide land, the odds were long of them ever finding each other again by chance. He would have to trust second company to come through. Hopefully they were chastised enough by now to have learned their lesson, or they never would.

Setting those thoughts aside in his perpetually growing drawer of 'things to worry about later', he retrieved another chain of logic from inside the mental storage device and went to work on it.

What Bolt had theorized was almost certainly true, he figured, hopping over a particularly expansive bush; the soots had to be tracking them using scouts, and mobilizing reserves, allowing them to defend a large front with relatively few dragons as long as they weren't concerned about any individual patch of territory. There were caveats to this. The element of surprise meant the enemy probably didn't have the system well established – unless they were a warlike tribe who did this for fun.

That was an unsettling thing to think about, and Byrd pushed it away from his mind, then stopped and brought it back. At least one dragon had to think about unsettling matters; in this case it was him. They'd broken contact at least; that was the good news, and a fact worth remembering. What should he do from here? Their course was still (nominally) on track for that palace to the north, but as far as he knew it was heavily fortified by now, so much so it wouldn't be worth the bother of mounting an assault if the Hivewing force numbered less than a division.

Another tree his face narrowly avoided, another bruise on the leading edge of his wing, already discolored with the dark spots of multiple other bruises.

He could turn around and go parallel to his track, wait for the soots following him to come by, take care of them in a decisive battle (using Stinger as bait), then get out of there.

Too risky. He didn't know how many they had (though he had a good idea), or where they were, or exactly what they were doing, or even if he could pull off another winning engagement against enemies who'd proved themselves to be competent more than half the time; dragons who were difficult to catch napping, unless they made mistakes, which were fortunate for him indeed.

So he would break off north tomorrow, along their original heading, and continue with what he had originally been tasked, which was reconnaissance, unless other orders arrived, till either the way let him send a report from where he was, or he deemed it necessary to return to a Hivewing camp to deliver intel for HICOMCN. Probably that place would be at Smolderfax.

"And stop," he said. "Reserve four for sentries till morning. Pass it down."

Forty-five dragons shuffled to a halt. A few trotted off into the woods to do their business, then returned, and the unlucky four enlisteds whose turn it was for lookout at this time of night went up the trees with nary a groan (if they had groaned there would've been sharp discipline, and they knew it).

"Get out the charts, Monarda."

"Yes, sir."

Byrd, too, ascended a mature, sweet-smelling tree big enough to hold his weight, at least for a couple of minutes. He was overdue to get a few hours of shuteye, but doing this was more important than retiring two or three minutes earlier.

He held up his brass, disk-like astrolabe, looking for the Green Star, as they were in the northern half of the world, and not the southern, where instead he would've gone for the Yellow Quadrant. His mark eluded him, till a wispy cloud drifted in front of one of the moons and revealed a verdant light gleaming, so close to his talons, but untouchable; even if he flew as high as a dragon could reach he would never hold it in his hand.

Nevertheless, it was still useful for navigation. He hung the circular instrument from a ring on its top, ensuring it was level, and not tilted. This was important. He put his eyes to the two holes in the thing and sighted the Green Star as best he could, then noted its inclination relative to the horizon. This was important too. Then he stuck out his tongue, thinking, figuring the local time, eyeing the stars, figuring the time, consulted a mental table, and came up with a reasonable result.

"Wish we didn't have to use these," he said, muttering. If not for it being a new continent they would know where they were instinctually: it being a new land not yet ten days old for them, they had to use instruments. That was one thing he was grateful to HICOMCN for, the instruments.

"Two hundred and fifty north from where we were in Smolderfax, from what Thorn wrote, and who knows how many west," said Byrd, looking down. Of course they hadn't got anything yesterday night; it had been raining, hard, and been miserable. Monarda was waiting at the bottom of the tree, head peering upwards and eyes glowing like those of a lynx. "Mark that down."

"Yes, sir."

"Do you have any idea of how far west we are?"

"Call it twenty miles tonight and forty going over the hills," said Monarda. "Not very much."

"Okay, mark that down too."

"Already done, sir."

"Another actionless day," said Byrd. "That's a good thing."

Monarda only shrugged, then put the maps back in her haversack. If combat was exciting for her she didn't say, but Byrd would've bet his mother's china set that it was. He chuckled nervously when he laid down to sleep. There were times when Monarda got bored of living with the normal people.

* * *

**July 7****th****, 5,015: Somewhere in the ****Eastern Skywing Kingdom**

It was a day before Ruby and Eagle found the ancient stronghold of Azkilach, and a day after Byrd made the decision to melt into the forest; in the middle of the timeline, so to speak, that Thrush met with a cluster of farmers a hundred miles north of Azley, that unfortunately wasp-occupied town.

That was a special part of Pyrrhia; the terrain there was unlike any ground anywhere else on that continent, and that is to say it was big-sky territory, gigantic, difficult to describe to a dragon who had never been there, who might fly from horizon to horizon and when he had arrived sense that the land had never changed, never would change, and would still be there by the time he died. The air was clear as crystal, and from where Thrush stood on the gray butte he could see for hundreds of miles, down to the coast, where an ineffable white haze concealed the sea. The earth sloped upwards towards his perch; its green grass met the sheer rocks rising sharply from the ground, precipitated by nothing. It was a long way down. It was a long way up, too.

Only a dragon – or perhaps a lynx or lucky mountain cougar – could ascend the sudden cliff. The summit was full of them, could hardly contain the crowd of tall dragons, short dragons, lookout dragons – Skywings steadfastly examining the vista for hostiles, the thin air no obstacle to their eyes. It was thicker here than Thrush was used to at the palace – but a good five thousand feet above sea level; enough altitude to make a few Mudwing pass out from hyperventilation, if they tried anything.

The tough dragons on the raised plateau were not Mudwings, yet on their backs and sides and shoulders they carried the distillation of a life's work; tools and seed, mostly tools. They were the ultimate oxymoron; the Skywing rancher.

"Fair winds and fair skies," said Thrush, greeting one. "I am Thrush."

"And the same to you," said he. "I am Peregrine, senior."

And a flash of memory came before Thrush and he remembered one of the JMA dragonets who'd been running around the first year, the bad year for Jade. He examined this dragon, and saw that the father looked like the son, albeit with a few differences.

The scales on the underside of his jaw had a whitish-gray tinge, like chalk; it was an affectation which would remain even after his next shedding: a mark of his experience and his age. When the dragons came up to the point, they consciously chose this one as their leader. Probably he was a retired major, or even colonel, one who'd decided to quit while he was ahead and pursue another line of work, that of free enterprise. It wouldn't have mattered if he'd stayed in the army; he was too old to make a difference on the field now. His current occupation was good enough.

"Yep, forty-five hundred head squirreled by Hart's Pass," he said.

"Better us than the wasps," said Thrush. Peregrine Sr. grunted. Behind him an associate spoke with a cluster of Thrush's subordinates standing in a circle about him, each lending an ear to what he had to say. It was a list of names – of recently dead Skywings, or those lost to the invaders.

"The cattle'll winter one, two winters," said Peregrine. "Then they'll start moving."

Thrush looked north, to Hart's Pass; he knew this land. He'd been born near here. And in the rancher's eyes was growing the glimmer of recognition. "They'll never find all of them. The land is too big."

The rancher nodded.

"Thanks for giving us the tip."

"It's the best I could do for my herd," said Peregrine.

"Will you go back, to the mountains?" asked Thrush.

"No."

"No?"

"You need logistics," said the rancher. Thrush knew this; the battalion of dragons milling around up here was proof enough of that. The dragon went on. "You need people managing your LoCs, misdirecting the wasps, keeping them off your back. I recognize you – you're from around here, but you can't spend all your time mopping up supply. And there's intel. Covering this country would take a hundred dragons. I have that – those who wouldn't join your company will still do their part."

Then Peregrine's eyes took on a contemplative look; instead of looking at Thrush they looked through him, and beyond him. His thoughts likely hinged on the coming of another war, and the inevitability of conflict which made life so difficult.

"Your compatriots brought supply," said Thrush, restarting the conversation. "I thank you for this, although… it's best to be off within the hour, for the both of our parties."

"Don't be too hasty," said Peregrine. He took a half-step backwards and turned his head, looking for a particular dragon, then (when he had found who his mark) shouted. "Is she here yet?"

"Close!"

"Don't let her start a prairie fire," said Peregrine.

"If you'll excuse my interruption, who is 'she'?" asked Thrush, disliking that he'd been left out of the loop.

Peregrine's face took on a wan smile. There were things in this world that frightened even him. "Scarlet's dearest pet."

Thrush bit his lip.

"Peril?"

Peregrine nodded.

"Where'd you find her?"

"Not too far from here, nearer the coast than is safe. She said she was adventuring. Ah, here she comes now."

The dragons on the rock, already tightly packed, crammed themselves together on the rim of the butte as Peril landed with a flare of her wings, the rock hissing under her talons. One accidental swish of her tail, one misstep – and they would be history. Thrush remembered Peril vividly from the Scarlet days. No one could unsee her, once they'd caught a glance of the thin, almost anorexic dragon with blue eyes and smoke curling upwards from all of her scales. Then he blinked, for Peril had changed. There was more to her now; she looked better fed, and at ease, if her movements were as controlled as they always were. Still, she screamed _danger _to Thrush's mind. The dragons in his company edged farther away than he; they were brought up on the legends and not the fact, and figured they would be incinerated if they got too close.

Well, they might. Peril had a unique personality.

"Hi Thrush. I didn't imagine you were out here, but I'm happy to see you anyway. Fake shake?"

All of a sudden Thrush found himself vigorously pumping Peril's talon from the safe distance of ten feet.

"Glad to see you," he said, and with the force of habit managed to lower his brows. "Your appearance is a bit of a surprise."

"Turtle and Tsunami left me on this side of the water," said Peril. Her happy-go-lucky glow dimmed for a moment, then regained its original strength. "I heard you had an invasion problem."

"We do," said Thrush. If he didn't know Peril's past he would never have guessed she was a multiple murderer, psychopath, and former pawn of an authoritarian dictatorship. The world was a fucked up place.

"I want to help, but I'm not sure how," she said.

Because obviously his dragons didn't need confidence in Peril whatsoever. There were lots of better things she could've implied instead of 'I don't know what I'm doing'.

"You can join the expeditionary," said Thrush. He was on the verge of subdividing his force to simplify delegation; why not do it soon? "We'll hammer out your circumstance in the organization soon."

"Sounds good to me," said Peril. "Making a difference."

Thrush could count on four talons the dragons he knew of who could change the world, and Peril was on that list. In fact, she already had. Thrush nodded, then addressed Peregrine.

"We thank you for the supplies, but we've been here too long," said he. "We'll use this place as a mail and supply drop."

"Good," said Peregrine. "No use in becoming too predictable."

"We'll keep the enemy on their toes," said Thrush. "We'll be moving south from here, lending a talon to the Mudwings."

Peregrine's snout took on a frown. "The Mudwings float or fall on their own. There's not much any one dragon can do to change that."

"We'll see," said Thrush. "Come along Peril, we've got to be going. And lieutenant! Give her a crash course in our operations, post-haste."

"Yes, sir."

"Fair winds," said Thrush.

"Fair winds!"

"Ready for takeoff! On me!" he shouted. His subordinates detached from Peregrine's dragons, then collected in diamonds, with no milling around between. Those who they'd picked up from the convoys were nearly as quick, and getting better with every day that passed. He was proud of his dragons, oh, he was proud. Then he remembered himself and leaped into the empty air southwards, followed swiftly by a rush of wings.

Peregrine Sr remained on the rock, then turned and strode away, till he was invisible beneath the lip of the rapidly receding outcropping. As suddenly as that, the elder dragon vanished from Thrush's sight.

Thrush looked ahead now, focused on the future and the present instead of the past. His shoulders strained at the pits, the tendons of his wings pulling to lift the weight of the old supply crate he bore under him, which banged his scales on the downstroke and tugged at his chest on the upstroke. Peril was the only unharnessed dragon near him; the wisps of smoke bleeding behind her like a spoor reminded him of the fiery scales which would incinerate any ropes. A dozen yards away bobbed the poor lieutenant, angular wings twitching from nervousness. His orders meant getting in touch with Peril so he could speak with her; but it was a difficult task to get in touch with a dragon who could burn him black if she bumped his wing. They would have to land if anything was to be explained – and preferably in a spot where she couldn't set a forest fire.

The only dragon who could twist tails with Peril and live was Clay of the Mudwings – but Clay was a kingdom off and far too slow.

There was Winter, but he was a freak case… then Thrush shook his head at himself; he'd been following the gossip too much. So it could be said that no dragon could twist tails with Peril and reliably live. With care, that aspect of hers could be tooled towards killing soots.

He flew on, making contingencies in his head and reaffirming them, and then making contingencies for those contingencies, as the land beneath him melted away to his north and was replaced by similar, subtly different land; ground greener and less rocky, such as the terrain he liked; country more suitable to the raising of cattle than Skywing dragonets. With the narrow, glittering band of the rightwards river his guide, he plowed the air currents towards the Mudwing kingdom, eventually passing the blurry border between one kingdom and the next, with no cheerful 'Welcome to Moorhen's Domain' to mark the way.

Having made no small amount of havoc, he was now flying blind into a land where he knew not where the enemies were, or what they were doing, or even if he was behind their main enemy groups or not. They had to use mobile warfare here – that was the best way to do it, a method of warfare only the Mudwings could comfortably eschew – and then only on their home territory. Static, pitched battles and wars of attrition were suicide. The plan, then, was to use Peril as their ace in the hole when encountering enemy troops, and his main force as a roving band of warriors, breaking every so often to forage supplies, as the Mudwings here were not so loyal to Scarlet as the ranchers of his homeland. Loitering was too passive.

At any rate, the land was steadily descending, and pools and lakes often caught his eye, even as the sun's glare dimmed behind ever more common clouds, ominous towers billowing upwards, breaching the bounds of what even a Skywing could do. For a minute they were traveling in the shadow of one of those pillars, his forces a train of ants struggling on flat sand, in a sky that had existed in a time before time, and would be just as blue on the day he died.

From horizon to horizon he saw five other dragons, and those traveling singly or in pairs: there were small squares of dark-colored land below; earth where crates of paraphernalia had been dumped and dragons had come to buy and sell, their talons scraping away the grass on patches of ground where what was left was dirt and stone. His Skywing eyes scrutinized the terrain, caught the face of a Mudwing glancing upward and took in its features, which mostly amounted to fear, then determination.

"Flag for descent!" he shouted.

He folded his wings so only half of them was exposed to the air, then nosed down, slicing against the rising air of the updraft column which was birthing a puffball beneath him even now. His wings brushed the incipient, round top of the white cloud, prickled, then came away damp, swirling mist clutching at his scales before it evaporated in the waning sunlight. Behind him Peril cut through the fog and tore it asunder; invisible air pushed the snowy tendrils away from her before they hissed and exploded into ethereal steam, while Peril emerged from the miniature cataclysm with scales dry and the inkling of a smile visible on her reptilian face.

Descending at nine hundred feet a minute, it took them a twelfth of an hour to get near the ground; a narrow creek around which trees had sprung up, with scraggly brush growing beneath them, and grass stretching away on the flanks of a shallow hill, lively green grass growing beneath the browned stalks of yesteryear, with prairie dogs snuffling placidly at the newcomers. Thrush slowed down, and Peril soared on the updraft coming from the hill, rising and swooping downwards when she lost the current, and climbing slower the next time.

"Secure the stockyard ahead," said Thrush. "There's a Mudwing inside; RoE do not engage unless engaged, hear me?"

"Yes sir," chorused the dragons, most of them. Then came the off-beat 'sir' of Peril. She was trying. Moons, she was trying.

"Leave him free, but make it clear he is not allowed to leave. Round up anyone else in the general area. Go."

SEC's dragons darted off like flickering flames, swarming the stucco stockade in groups of four and occupying it, despite the occasional protesting noises emanating from inside, and the yelling and roaring and a good deal more yelling: another third of the force fanned out and started looking for dragons fleeing for the Mudwing kingdom.

It was all over as quickly as breathing, and almost before Thrush could get over the anti-livestock stucco, too. There was the Mudwing in the courtyard, surrounded by crates of tools and soldiers, bigger than any of the Skywings individually but outnumbered a hundred to one. His eyes blinked from one dragon to another, and he swallowed.

"Robbers?" he asked. "In this day and age?"

He was delaying. No matter.

"No," said Thrush, stepping forward from where he'd awkwardly mounted the wall. Hopefully no one had noticed. "A Captain."

"There are better places for a war to start than my shop," said the Mudwing.

Peril, growing tired of flying, landed in the opposite corner, then frowned when a sprig of straw burst into flames beneath her talons. The Mudwing flinched, then stood stock-still, as if the act of not moving would make everyone forget his reaction.

"I'm not here to start a war with the Mudwings," said Thrush. "I'm here to say that we're not starting a war with the Mudwings."

"I don't buy it," said the Mudwing.

"Don't buy it," said Thrush. "Rent it."

He looked up. "We know you're delaying."

"Whatever for?" asked the shop-owner. "For what reason would I delay you?"

Two Skywings dropped another Mudwing on the dirt, too close to Peril for anyone's comfort.

"We got a runner, sir."

"Good. Keep looking for more," said Thrush, then turned back to the first Mudwing. "You were saying?"

The bravado deflated from the dragon like air escaping a popped balloon.

"You're right. But still… what reason do I have to believe you?"

"None at all," said Thrush. "I'll tell you what we're here for. There's an invasion from another continent sweeping up from your southern border, which will soon consume everything you own unless you do something about it. We're here to fight it."

"Bollocks."

"You have every right to say that, but you're in the wrong," said Thrush. He produced the scales of a wasp from inside a carry-on which he wore, tossed them to the shop-keeper. "Tell me those came from a dragon in Pyrrhia."

"Paint."

"Scratch them. I don't have all day."

So the Mudwing scratched them, and bit at them, and rasped them, until half the scales were eaten down and were still the same color.

"Paint," he said, but there was no longer the same conviction in his tone.

"We're here for a just cause," said Thrush. "I can't have you be a hindrance to us, riling up the countryside in their favor, whether you know it or not. That was what your accomplice was going to do. Don't make any trouble."

"No promises," said the Mudwing.

"Don't make any trouble."

Thrush's gaze was unyielding, and it took less than fifteen seconds for the Mudwing to break.

"Fine."

"Get out of dodge, too. East is the best bet," said Thrush. "They're not here yet, so count yourself lucky, pack up and go."

"S'not like you're making it any more hospitable around here, flying in with a battalion and prancing around as if you owned the place," said the Mudwing. He sighed. "I'll go."

"Good idea," said Thrush.

It was a better one than even he knew. For now, though, he had a few more pressing problems. Such as what they were going to eat, and where they were going to proceed from here. His best chance, he decided, was to link up with any Mudwing groups who'd survived the wasp invasion, help them set up a defense network, then high-tail it back home where he belonged, hopefully before the kingdom collapsed, or his soldiers succumbed to starvation.

Being pragmatic didn't mean he couldn't plan for the future.

* * *

**Written June 23****rd****, 2020 – ****July 9****th****, 2020.**

**Published July 12th, 2020.**


	9. Contact - Obstruction

**Contact – ****Obstruction**

* * *

**A/N: Wrapping up a plotline I had almost forgotten about, the ****middle**** part of this chapter deals with another subplot which some of you may have taken interest in ****(aka pt35, way back in chapter 2)**

**I'm getting pretty weary of switching back and forth between PoVs all the time. Would you guys like to see long, two-three chapter arcs from one character's point of view or would you like to stay with what I'm doing currently?**

**As always, many thanks to ****LiterallyHasNoIdeasForAnOKName, who looked over parts of this story and gave feedback. I would also like to thank pt35, who stoked my creativity and pointed out problems with the story. They are both authors and you can find their work published under those names on fanfiction. As always, if you enjoy the story, don't hesitate to give me your thoughts.  
**

* * *

**July 7****th****, 5,015: Somewhere in the Skywing Kingdom**

If that day was characterized by anything mundane in later memory, it was that it was then that they ran out of the food brought out of Smolderfax. It was this which first invoked recollections in those who survived, before they recounted their later experiences.

Unrealized memories, however, were of no comfort to Byrd, who had a sinking feeling in his gut that late morning as he watched the last of the mutton torn up and eaten, his own portion much smaller than those of his subordinates, as he did not wish them to go without. The ground was still damp in the shaded places, and the bottoms of his forearms and legs left patterned scale-prints in the moist earth, bare except for its clothing of droplets of dew and a smattering of pine needles and small grasses.

Already the dew was evaporating, vanishing into the air before his eyes. The air was different at altitude; the wind took moisture and whisked it away, and blew out flames when they were most needed, but never when they were least wanted. It didn't affect the fires of the soots, who burned Chervil, and laid a longish cut lengthwise along Byrd's scale. He chalked this up to another instance of the strange, quiet powers every dragon had which made reality wail.

His muscles yelled at him to keep lying down, to rest, to sleep. Byrd brushed them aside, pushed his body upwards from the right side while balancing his newly standing form on his left talons, which strained for a moment, then strengthened, digging pinpricks into the dirt. Byrd rolled his shoulders, felt the back of them brush his front pair of wings, then knew all of him was there, even his tail, which was stinging and twitching as the blood rushed into it.

Now he remembered. He'd slept on his tail. He kept telling himself he'd never do that again, and every few months it would happen to him most embarrassingly. None of the enlisted had their heads his way, however; most of them were licking the last blood from their chops. Savoring the last of the morning stillness, he managed an order, though his voice cracked on the last word.

"Pack up," he said.

It was at this point that the four lookouts from last night stirred from where they'd been lying on the ground, out cold with their legs resting on one side, their bodies pressed close to each other like soldiers often do before they learn better. They looked similar to dozing cats, only more deadly.

"Is there any food?" they asked.

"Check your haversack," said Monarda. She was crisper than the rest of them, standing offside with the brush covering up her ankles, turning her head this way and that to gaze through the trees and discern, possibly, what lay in the forest.

"Awwww," one said. They got up anyway, then leaned against the birch trees arranged in a ring around the camp, munching rations. One even scavenged a scrap of mutton from where it had fallen on a slab of fallen bark. He was lucky.

Slow moving.

"North, for five hours," he said. "No, belay that – two."

They set off.

Slipping through the trees, he cast a glance as to the position of the sun. It was getting on an hour since he'd issued the order. With the gears grinding in his head, he did a bit of figuring. With the rations running low, he wanted to be back in Smolderfax within three or four days; by the eleventh. If they took off for it now they could make the town in two days and a night, full stop, three if he wanted to give his soldiers rest. For combat-effectiveness, the second option seemed better.

They were an hour in.

"Number check," he said. Losing dragons while traveling was creatively called 'natural wastage', and Byrd didn't want any of that happening to his guys. The company stopped for three minutes in time as the word went up and down the line, checking and double-checking for surety, and then Monarda stepped forward with the word.

"We have all forty-five soldiers, including you, sir. Maven is lagging behind."

"How badly?"

"He was losing a few feet of ground for every hundred we went."

"Is he complaining of aches?"

Monarda shrugged. "They didn't tell me."

"Could've been that rodent," said Byrd. "I'd hate for him to be impaired."

He took two deep breaths, purging his lungs of built-up bad air, then made a low shout. "Continue!"

As slowly as they were going, an hour's difference of trotting made no difference to the structure of the land. It remained hilly and forested, with occasional gaps in the trees allowing sunlight to fall directly through the canopy. It was getting towards the afternoon, even though they had been going only an hour; Byrd had let them sleep in too much.

And then the terrain got too hilly. They ran into a sheer cliff about thirty minutes after stopping to account themselves, running neither parallel nor perpendicular to their course, but roughly north-west, counter to where their intended course, unless he either wanted to turn west and head back towards the course, or east and go south, further from the glimmering mountain palace he'd seen from the tower at Smolderfax, less than a week ago.

The dragons of third company shuffled to a stop not far from their leader, Maven wringing his arm and clenching his teeth.

"Which way, sir?" asked Monarda. Byrd thought of Bolt, but the young soldier was sharpening his talons, dulled by the long walk, and was little use.

"A few more miles won't make much difference," he said. "What direction will give us the best hope of catching Stinger?"

Monarda whipped their intelligence chart out of their haversack. "What speed?"

"Full, not flank."

"Got it, sir. West and west by south."

"Compasses for west, then," said Byrd, speaking louder so everyone could hear him.

"I was getting bored of the new territory anyway," said Chervil, on the other side of the group. "Trees for days and rocks to stub your toes on."

Byrd chuckled as he braced his body between two trees and buzzed his wings, first in small bursts to help him get up, then in longer sequences, and finally in a sustained manner as he took to the sky for the first time in twenty-eight hours, with the rest not far behind.

They spilled into the air as if the ground had opened a crack and released a miniature torrent of painted warriors, gathering in four-dragon formations where each dragon was separated by a dozen yards, their wings translucent as they beat faster than the eye could follow, their tails rippling behind them and their talons dangling in the wind. They were in the foreground of the great shelf of broken-down rock which stood high above the forest, whose trees neglected to climb the slate banks.

Ah, but it felt good to be flying again. Third company made good time that day, eating up the miles like the ration bars they ate while airborne. There were no soots, horizon to horizon; no other dragons, only vast acreages of young trees and old, whitened hulks which arose from the earth the moment they passed a small river. It was a welcome change in the scenery, but Byrd could not help but think about what had caused the fire. Had it been natural, or dragon-made?

Burning down the forest would've been an effective area-denial tactic. He couldn't imagine the smoke and heat caused by a fire like that, but it must've been huge.

And there on the horizon in the direction of their travel was another column of smoke; small, but unmistakable in its acrid blue curls. Smolderfax? - no, they were too far away to see that town, and too far north. Byrd hurried on, and the dragons behind him followed his wingbeats in traveling wedge, for they needed no urging on. The miles fell away beneath them as they swept past verdant trees and undergrowth, and reached the site of the burning an hour later.

Byrd descended to the ground just outside the burning territory, the better to speak. He dared not tread on hot coals: though it was ridiculous, there was always the possibility of the fire in the burning boughs leaping up and engulfing him, like the fire of the soots. Maybe, he thought, he would not be so afraid of fire if he had grown up with it, and coaxed it, but the Hivewing reliance on flamesilk for lighting and forging wrought unfamiliarity, and unfamiliarity bred fear.

"This isn't where we left Stinger, no – that was south of here," said Byrd. "Any ideas?"

The scent of the smoking tear in the forest left a bitter taste on his tongue. Maven landed with a thump in the background, panting and scratching himself against an unburnt birch trunk. Byrd eyed Maven and Maven held out a talon, thumbs-up, 'everything's ok'.

"Stinger, probably," said Monarda. "He must have come north, trying to outpace you to the top, then gotten jumped somehow."

Byrd had forgotten to share Bolt's revelation with Monarda. Now that he'd calmed down he could see how it could be farfetched, since they had no evidence for it, yet still he was operating as if the soots were fighting in scout-and-reserve. Apparently that paid dividends compared to Stinger's model.

Or, more likely, Stinger had been defeated because 3rd Company was not there to help him. That was Byrd's fault.

"If there was a corpse here, we'd know," said Byrd. "Fan out, try to find anything that might give us a lead. Flying doesn't give a track, and we don't know which way he's gone. It's not a full forest fire, thank goodness."

It was scary enough, though, with the billowing clouds of smoke emanating from what seemed like miniature sheets of flame in dry brush and places where logs had fallen. The forest would be burning if not for the rain two days ago.

While the forty-odd dragons under his command combed the wrack, Byrd ascended and hovered just outside where the smoke was ascending from the gash in the countryside, then pulled out his spyglass, extended it, looked through it. Mostly he was checking the horizon to the west and south, towards the sea or Smolderfax. Once he swept the ground to the north and east, checking for enemies flying at low altitude, but there were none, or if there were any they were hidden exceedingly well. It supported his hypothesis that there weren't as many soots as they'd figured.

"Sky's empty," he said, flying back down. His talons touched the ground smoothly, and it was only after they were solidly down that he let his wings rest, and had his shoulders bear the weight. "Either Stinger beat it or he was never here."

"Probably was," said Monarda.

"That's funny," shouted Bolt, his voice loud to be heard over the crackling, spitting fire.

"What is it?" asked Byrd. He half-trotted, half-cantered to where Bolt was, pulling a sooty object from underneath a fallen bough which had escaped the ellipse of destruction with little more to show for it than the dessicated mushrooms which were shriveled up on its top. The object, however, had seen better days. It was twisted in two, and it tinkled when Bolt finally extricated it from the branch.

"Looks like your spyglass, if it was stepped on and left in the mud to rot," said Bolt.

"Stinger's," said Byrd. He wiped at the scurf of earth and scraped away with an additional layer of red paint. "It's as if he tripped and dropped the thing, then pushed the branch over it or something. It's Hivewing make, at least, and I don't know of anyone else of our kind who would've been up here."

"Which way did he go?" asked Monarda.

"Towards town, probably," said Byrd. "We should be north of that, but a little bit east still, correct?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then get moving," said Byrd. He jerked his head. "Maven, how you doing?"

The wiry dragon was leaning against the birch, as he'd been since he'd got here.

"Not feeling so well," said the soldier. The virile voice of yesterday was gone, replaced by a crackling half-whine.

"Can you fly two days?"

Maven considered. It was scary that he had to consider.

"Yeah."

"Anything particularly wrong?"

Byrd was still shouting, even though the fire was dying down. There was just too much moisture for it to be self-sustaining.

"Itches, and aches, and soreness. Why you askin' chief?"

"Because I am," said Byrd. "That's no way to talk to your staff sergeant. Get up and let's go."

So they did, fanning the flames as they took off and turned south-east by south, more urgently this time, and with less of a good mood. Stinger had been there, no doubt about it, and there had been a battle, miraculously with no casualties except a spyglass. The soots must have torched this part of the forest in the low-level fighting.

All too grim, Byrd conjured up the likely story.

The not-quite-competent company commander had realized the game was up, and was making a run for home, with casualties hanging from his force like beads on an open-ended necklace, slipping off as the soots killed any dragon who fell out of formation, and a few who didn't. Eventually Stinger would have to make a stand, but – and here was the stickler – his dragons would be deadly tired, and low on morale after their recent defeats and fast flying.

Byrd was the only dragon who stood between second company's capture and the soots, or worse, massacre. It took a cool head to withstand an invasion and not develop a vengeful lust for blood.

Justice alone demanded -

Wait.

If justice demanded retribution, what were the Hivewings doing here in the first place?

That was one of the thoughts he shouldn't be having, so he put it away in his mental filing cabinet and swore never to visit it again. He should have cured himself of disloyalty, but out of nowhere it materialized within him again, dangit.

With these things in mind he again raced across the territory.

It was going to be one hell of a patrol report when he got there.

Had it been a week ago, now, that he'd been jostling for position with Stinger at Smolderfax for leadership when Thorn left? Was it only yesterday he'd criticized his soldiers for criticizing second company and felt hollow inside? Now he was worried sick, and that told him he was a good dragon, that he cared.

The ground made a mockery of him as he strove onward, as the muscles in his wings burned, fighting against the acid weariness which crept from his bones. It felt like he would never make it, that even if he was going fast enough he had missed Stinger's course, and the other staff sergeant was fighting to the death elsewhere in the arcane wilds.

"Soots ahead, sir," said Chervil. Now was not the time for a joke, and the keen-eyed spotter never considered one. His voice strained. "An eighth turn right off-course, high!"

Byrd's eyes searched for the spot, found a group of dots he'd taken to be vultures, but which the sun had shone its light on and revealed to be colored red. They were swooping and circling in the air, above another group of dots, which were straggling like a row of birds buffeted by the wind.

"Adjust course one eighth right, crescent on call!" he shouted. "Flank speed."

He looked back and saw most of them picking up the pace satisfactorily, their four wings beating so rapidly they were a translucent blur to his eyes. Behind them lagged Maven, trailing by half a mile, and no longer able to keep up. Ever more he receded into the green foliage, until Byrd decided it wasn't worth his time to glance over his shoulder and spend the three seconds it took to check on the dragon.

Maven wouldn't be accompanying them until they stopped to rest, and that was that.

One of the soots rose into the air, crested on the wave of his momentum, then pulled a tight turn and uttered a shout, a yell which stood out to Byrd's ears fifteen or twenty seconds later because it was echoed by his fellows. They'd closed to a range of three miles, then, and it was at this point that the excellently disciplined soots had broken free from the combat tunnel vision and noticed the incoming threat.

They reorganized, pulling away from Stinger's battered forces en masse; leaving a pitiful, motley company now reduced to two wings and an injured flight, if that.

"Crescent formation! Blowpipes ready!"

A third of third company drew the blowpipes they'd long been gripping at their sides, and the rest tightened their talons on their spears, spreading out and edging to the front in four-dragon clumps, protection for the blowpipe soldiers and each-other.

"Spears ready!"

The soots had fully disengaged now, were letting Stinger's forces slink away into the woods, and that gave Byrd an idea, even as the red, angular enemies flew above them and feinted at diving, trying to waste the Hivewings' ammunition. It was a point of pride that his soldiers had grown wise to such tricks.

"Treetop level!" called Byrd. A second passed, and his soldiers only began to react. "Treetop level! Defend your own!"

He was playing to the Hivewing strengths by having his soldiers hover between the boles. No soot could dive on them without breaking a wing trying to pull-up. Though there was a small amount of disorganization when his soldiers descended, the enemy could not exploit it. The Hivewings were invulnerable to the conventional tactics. Fluttering just above the soft leaves, Byrd looked up and saw the soots fly around as they realized they had to go one-on-one to engage. Not three-on-one. Not two-on-one. One-on-one, at best.

And even if it was an even fight, that was still better than being defenseless as the enemy pounded them, swooping above and beneath and all around him, especially when he counted his foes and found they numbered 'only' sixty.

It didn't take long for the soot commander to attempt a solution. A detachment of three dragons folded a wing and dropped from the circling horde above them, probing.

"Pick targets!"

When they came too close Byrd let out a shout.

"Fire!"

Fifteen darts shot away and were lost, and one of the oncoming dragons faltered. He did not stop, though he must have known he was doomed, but let out a blast of fire and charged into the friendly ranks from the side, torching the forest as he went, his flames fueled by the knowledge that he had nothing left to lose.

Monarda ducked beneath the branches as the heat roiled her way, and Byrd shied away as he brought his spear in front of him to stave off the worst of the damage, then backed away quickly, waiting for the poison to take effect.

More flames erupted, blistering his scales by proximity and boy did that hurt, the flames were going to get him and – he ducked out of the way and let the crowd go by, controlling his fear better than most. And it was that clarity which brought tidings of their imminent doom.

The two other soots were in the forest beneath, stalking, splitting Byrd's attention between above and below, and by doing so bringing him to the point of impotence.

"Fire at will!" Byrd cried. "Fire at will!"

He didn't know if anyone heard him.

There was a single dragoness, whoever, who had the measure of their enemies. A thwack and crunch rose above the roaring of the dying soot, and then a squelch, followed by a roar and feminine hiss of triumph. Byrd permitted his lungs a breath of relief; Monarda had come through.

A hiss of fire permeated the air, followed by another crunch, which was succeeded by a yell.

"Not again! I just scratched the charcoal off, you tuna-colored bastard."

Two dragons and Chervil had tackled the last soot when it tried to come up through the trees, and while the enemy had had the worst of it, Chervil came in second place for the hurt. His scales were smoking, on the verge of catching fire, his wings were scorched, and his eyes were red and weeping.

Everything since the three soots entered the fray had taken place in twenty seconds, twenty seconds his focus had been inwards instead of outwards, during which the intelligent enemy commander could've taken apart third company while Byrd was preoccupied.

But he didn't.

Wary of sending their forces in piecemeal, and unsure if they could win against the new Hivewing tactic, the soot commander withdrew a half mile, content to block the way home until he thought of a counterattack.

"Regroup!" shouted Byrd.

All around him his dragons were falling back into the four-dragon flights which ensured safety for each soldier. The poisoned soot must have been taken out, or fallen to the forest floor, too sick to move if he wasn't dead.

Byrd already knew from Smolderfax that poison was less reliable than they'd been taught in boot. The enemy wasn't dying the way they were supposed to.

"Open up the flights two-three yards," he said, "Pass it around."

"Yessir."

The voice made Byrd look, turn away, then look again. It was Maven, the gray-striped Hivewing fidgeting in the air, his arms tense and twitching, but his eyes never meeting Byrd's.

"We'll talk later," said Byrd.

His tone brooked no argument.

"Monarda! You down there?" he asked.

"Yes sir."

"Report," said Byrd. He anchored his talons on two trees, relieving half the weight on his wings.

Sticks snapped underfoot, and woody brush swished and hissed as Monarda moved about beneath the canopy, then pulled her weight up the trunk of a stout, sweet-smelling tree, one with three-pronged, symmetrical leaves and the scabs of light green buds.

"Two casualties I saw, one bad," she said. "One had two wings burned off. He can't fly right now."

Byrd hadn't seen that one, but did see another, raked by a series of gaping, bloody talon-swipes, lying in a red pool on the forest floor.

"Can he walk?" asked Byrd.

"Yes, sir."

"Good," he said. Then he raised his voice. "Find me Bolt, and get a flight looking for a water source. Be back within two hours. And you four, casualties."

There was shuffling in the group, as the requisite, gray-striped soldier pushed himself to the fore, and four dragons shot off looking for water, if there was any to be had. The last flight had the grim job of caring for the wounded and disposing of the dead.

Bolt made a tail salute.

"As you were. That company and wing of soots over there are our problem. Do you see any way of getting past it?"

"Getting past it, sir?"

"Yes."

Bolt surveyed the terrain. There was a rise in the ground towards the enemy camp, evidenced by the taller trees in that direction. The shallow crest continued roughly east to west, then conjoined with a rocky knoll about fifty feet above the treetops; the foot of a bluff which ran roughly from southeast to northwest, like the rest of the hills and valleys in this country.

The outcropping was an excellent perch – for a specialized force with long blowpipes. The enemy had encamped just out of range, trusting their wings to give them oversight better than a fixed location. In Byrd's mind, that was a mistake.

"Get dry wood, and flint and steel," he said, the word 'wood' rolling easily off his tongue now, where before it came unsteadily from his lips. "We'll start a fire now, then keep it burning after nightfall. Fool them into thinking we're here, then slip out."

"I was thinking the same," said Bolt. "Those guys look tough, and I don't want a melee. Wait. What about scent?"

"The mud will help, but we'll have to go into the wind," said Byrd. He wiped the dirt from a talon on his scales, licked it, then held it up and waited for it to try. The cool breeze penetrated first on the northern side. "I'll do another test before we move."

Bolt kicked a leafless sapling halfway up, scratching the bark, which already was turning soft with rot. Another kick was enough to fell it. Byrd rolled his shoulders, untying the knotted muscles, then set off to tell the thirty-odd dragons lazing around about their new job.

The once novel forest became the setting of their drudge work, kicking and cracking and snapping of too-long sticks, as the detritus was assembled into a pile of brushwood, the dry leaves gathered in and the lingering embers of the prior battle stamped out. Byrd supervised this with half an eye, turning the rest of his attentions to Maven, who was leaning on a healthy birch, scratching both it and himself.

"Yeah," said the soldier, seeing Byrd approach. "You're gonna give me crud about discipline n bunk n stuff, and warnings and blah."

His tone was still scratchy, but no longer a whine. It was as if his voice had dropped.

Maven's half-closed eyes slowly traversed the forest, eyelids fluttering with the intermittent breeze.

How was Byrd supposed to handle this? How was he, who had his doubts, supposed to enforce discipline without feeling like the world's biggest hypocrite?

"Dragon up," he said, "and stop giving me lip."

"And why should I?"

"Because I am the authority here, put in charge of this company by high command, first and foremost, and last and least, I have earned these dragons' trust by my actions, which have probably saved you from a painful death, that is why. I do not care if you don't feel like obeying orders, you will obey orders quickly and respectfully. There is no 'or else' to this order; it simply is."

Maven licked spit from where it was accumulating behind yellow teeth, then ground his molars.

"You're making me angry."

"You've not seen the beginning of angry."

A pause.

"Not worth the trouble, you aren't," said Maven. He wandered into the center of the small glade, twisting his head this way and that as if lost. He leaned heavily to one side, lean legs stretched to their utmost, then stumbled leftwards and almost fell. Eventually he settled and contented himself with rearranging sticks where the fire was going to be, licking up drool when it threatened to spill to the ground, twitching oddly and mumbling things to himself.

A sudden movement caught Byrd's attention; shadows flitting from one tree to the next. He drew his spear from his side, stepped forward, mouth opening to give the call to arms.

"Sergeant!"

The first in the line of shadows stepped into a light patch, revealing a Hivewing snout framed between a white tree and a row of thorn bushes, their vines tangled and brambly.

"Report!"

The four Hivewings drew closer, half of them bleeding from odd gashes, the rest sporting black bruises and drooping wings. Wryly, Byrd thought they were in good shape as troops went.

"We found a spring, sir," said the first. "Plenty of mud."

"Good," said Byrd. He pivoted on one talon and moved with the other three, scratching out a raw patch of loam on the leaf-covered earth. "Third company, listen up."

A pair of soldiers trotting backwards while dragging wood stopped and perked up their ears.

"Camouflage at the spring, no more than eight of you there at a time, max. Be quieter than mice."

He looked up and scowled at the red dot soaring overhead, scored by the light of the waning sun. It banked left and the shadows shifted; now to its belly, now to its neck as it espied their camp from its safe height. Byrd felt like it was staring at him.

He dropped his gaze.

"The soots can't know we're up to funny business."

A soldier opened his mouth, then closed it, then stamped the earth with his talons. Byrd looked at the dragon.

"Question?"

"Are we going to eat now, sir?"

"Permission granted," said Byrd, a soft growl rumbling in his throat when he saw everyone stop what they were doing and pull a ration bar out of their haversacks. It was a fifteen minute setback.

His arms shook. He was too revved to be hungry.

Things went smoothly after that, despite the delay, though Maven refused to eat, drink, or move, instead growling at anyone who came near the firewood he was hunching at, which was troubling because it was one of three piles.

That dragon was becoming an impediment to the mission, Byrd told himself, looking down at the activity below from where he was hovering a yard above the trees. The soots ahead of him were the worst block, but troubles closer to home were bad for morale. It could've been the bite – but Byrd knew of no fever which resulted in this, had never learned of one despite his odd upbringing. Those thoughts led him to Monarda, and at that he told himself to focus.

The red menace were encamped about a mile away, clustered together on a clear patch atop the rock they'd shunned earlier. He brought up his spyglass and pulled, clearing the image of the soots and blurring the leaves of the trees close to him, so that the lime-green canopy wavered in an indistinguishable mass of vegetation and the light brought by the late afternoon sun.

Byrd's enemies were having a discussion. There was one dragon at the head of it; standing higher than any of the others, and speaking infrequently. Two others were talking in stops and starts, planning how to engineer third company's demise, likely. The rest of the sixty-odd soots were either circling overhead or resting on the rock or on the trees.

Having them on the rock complicated things.

"Sergeant."

The words came from beneath, were spoken in a near hiss. Byrd looked down and received a tail salute.

"As you were. What?"

"The casualty crew found another one farther out. He didn't make it."

"Action total?"

The dragon beneath him waited the length of a deep breath before answering.

"Two dead, three further casualties; two with their wings burned off, one bleeding heavily."

It was the worst after-action casualty report Byrd had yet received, and this from a skirmish. That third company had been spared thus far was a stroke of luck, a stroke he saw was now turning against them.

"If they can't fly they're on their own," said Byrd. "Tell them quietly, I wish them the best."

Once their forces took this area his dragons would turn up sooner or later. So Byrd hoped. For the first time the company was under a forty-soldier strength, and that stung. He looked to the soots one more time, saw a gleaming cavalcade of red scales slink off the pinnacle and duck into the forest, their bodies low to the ground, and wingtips bobbing with their footsteps. Simultaneously the remainder of the unit beat their wings and shot into the air towards him, as if catapulted.

The lookout blinked.

"To arms!" yelled Byrd, and was answered by a horn-blast from beneath. When it died away and was replaced by the distant rushing of wings he added, "Watch for enemies in the forest!"

After that his orders meant nothing, because there was no time to make them: the enemy was too close and the attack too sudden, and his soldiers were cast adrift of his guidance and left to fend for themselves, in groups of four or five clustered by trees, or pairs of dragons vulnerable to divide and conquer.

What Byrd saw was a maelstrom, soots charging him and dodging his spear, then attacking from another direction; teeth gnashing, fire billowing and dying into smoke which split into golden wisps in the sun's dying light; the witching hour; enemies running around torching the place, and splitting the Hivewings with the flames.

Into the whirlwind came the soots from the forest, and after them entered the eight Hivewings who'd been busy putting on camouflage.. The muddy Hivewings formed a unit, making their task the defense of the woodpiles, and killing the soots who'd split up in individual fights.

Byrd saw this from where he lay on the edge of the meadow, his body tossed up against a copse of green weeds and browned thorns, watching the crowd go by. A Hivewing got close and its mouth moved, but he couldn't hear the sound.

He saw his soldiers standing by the woodpiles, spears pointing in a circle outwards as the blowpipe wing expended the last of its ammunition; he felt his ears rustle from the rush of air as the soots set fire to the brush and the leaves and bushes on the far side of the of the fighting went up in sparks; he watched the blue shadows of evening dispel, vanished by angry firelight.

Maven lunged at the soots, and the soots ran, till one of their number came up with a halberd and sliced the soldier dead.

He should be moving. The heat on his face was like staring into an oven.

Byrd picked himself up on his left two legs, reared to his full height, then stumbled. His soldiers were winning the battle, losing the war. The fire was all-consuming. It crept through the brown leaves on the forest floor; licked at the woodpiles, charcoaled the outside logs before infiltrating them with fingers of flame.

A pinecone exploded with a bang, blasting him with smoke, and he coughed, head shaking, neck rattling, lungs searing as if he'd taken a hard flight in the cold. He needed to get his soldiers out of here. He wiped away the spit from his jaws with a foretalon, then bellowed.

"Regroup! Southwards!"

Where was south? – towards the tall, brown tree with the nuts scattered at its roots. The sun told him that. He coughed again, then loped away from the scene – alone. He should've set a point of regroup. He should've reckoned for this.

No one could reckon for this. He yelled over his shoulder.

"Regroup! Southwards!"

The soots were gone. There were no red scales before him, only inferno, running up the trees and consuming them in gouts of flame.

"Sarge!"

"I'm here!"

Against all odds, Chervil pushed through smoldering thorns, his talons scattering windblown embers as he stepped. His chest scales were melted into each other, like colored wax left out in the sun. A train of soldiers followed, eyes wild, champing at the path Chervil set for them like horses about to bolt. A roar heralded the approach of the fire, racing towards them in streaks.

"Sarge, we've got to go."

He needed to leave, but he had to stay.

"Stay here. Above the trees. Just out of reach of the fire," said Byrd. He panted for breath. "I'll be back!"

And he loped off with a winded gait, stopping every few paces for the sake of his lungs, wiping away the grime with a foretalon which was dirtier than his snout, then going around the perimeter of the flames; an eerily glowing pit of nightmare which cast long shadows that disappeared in the fringes of the deep forest. He could see his on his right, stretching so far it was distorted. He snorted, clearing smoke-clogged nostrils.

He would not be like Stinger. He would stick around for his people.

Suddenly a striped dragon crashed through the undergrowth, rearing, beating wings which were glassy stubs, leading another, and another; a disorganized cluster of soldiers with varying burns. They were running, flying, out of control.

"Report!" he shouted.

They stopped in their tracks and turned to him, and in that moment order rose above chaos. Somebody babbled something incoherent, but that was enough.

"Chervil – down south – go to him," he said. "Seen anyone else?"

The dragons shook their heads. Their number totaled more than five, fewer than ten. Byrd had forty dragons – had had forty dragons. There must be more. But he was still on the southern side of the blaze, and he was running out of time. The northerly breeze he'd sampled earlier was blowing it towards them, and the inferno needed little encouragement to broil him alive, even at a distance of a dozen yards from the first creepers of fire.

He lunged eastward, or what he thought was eastward. The last rays of the sun had disappeared over the hills, and the silver light of the moons was choked out by the trees and the flames. There were three more dragons on the far side, and he sent them all back, but after that, no more.

"Regroup! Southwards!"

His cries were echoed by the crackle of the thirsting fire. Shadows moved in the forest – it was his imagination – no, it was his own shadow. He saw shapeless forms flitting from bush to bush at his side. The trees roiled and bent; the air twisted and waved with heat. His mouth was dry, too dry, but when he licked his lips to wet them his tongue scalded.

A dragon took him by the shoulders, pulled him away from the flames and into the border of the woods, held him up when he stumbled over a log. It brought him southwards, then had him fly into the open sky above, where the air was cooler, and the wall of fire transformed into a jagged rent in the still forest.

"Where to?" asked a voice.

"South – southwards," said Byrd. His savior was immersed in shadow, but he knew that tone. "Chervil is there."

"Good, sir."

"Any others?"

The dragoness looked over her shoulder. "One behind us. Otherwise, nobody."

It was Monarda, and Byrd was thankful. Chervil and a few soldiers were hovering above the treetops a few dozen yards away from the fringes of the blaze, huddled up in a knot despite the warmth. There could not have been more than twenty dragons in that group, or half what his strength had been a week ago.

He pitied the Hivewing who could not fly.

"Report!"

"Twenty-one of us here, sir. We lost all our stuff."

"Including rations?"

"Eleven bars to go around, sir. That's all. Want to split?"

"I have three in my haversack," said Byrd. His head swam, and he swerved in flight, his talons scraping a tree. Then he recovered himself. "That makes fourteen."

"Who's that behind you?"

"Me," said a voice; deeper than Chervil's, lighter than Byrd's. "Bolt."

Byrd, plus Monarda, plus Bolt, plus those already here – that made twenty-four. The losses were still appalling, but he didn't have time to think about it now, because he knew he would be spending plenty thinking about it later.

"… Orders?"

"We'll wait here for five minutes, then to Smolderfax," said Byrd. He looked south and saw nothing but the ground and the stars, and the dark, humpbacked form of the stone ridge underscoring it all.

"This wasn't what I was expecting when I woke up this morning," said Chervil.

"Can it."

"Sorry, sir."

What had he done wrong, and how could he have done better? His plan to slip out under cover of darkness had been doing so well, and then the soots had come and it failed. These soldiers under his command trusted him, and half of them were dead before the fortnight was out. What did that say about him?

"Sarge. Sarge." Chervil's voice broke in on his thoughts, and he realized he'd been thinking in a loop. "It's been five minutes. Are we going to stay here or -"

"Set course for home," said Byrd. "We'll fly until morning."

He was alive. There were too many dragons who were not, who'd died this day, and now occupied empty space in the formation of third company. His soldiers deserved a better commander. It would not be until they reached Smolderfax that they'd be able to get one.

And to think; since they'd landed on these shores it had only been one week.

* * *

**July 8****th****, 5,015: Somewhere in the Skywing Kingdom.**

It is time at last to take a quick peek inside Maj. General Venom's tent, in a camp just outside of Azley.

Hers was not Krait's man-cave abode, but it was not typically female, either; the brown canvas and smooth iron tent-poles rested between the two extremes. The lush sward, once owned by another tribe, now supported a proud flag-pole flying a standard much like Blister's black-and-gold of 5,006 vintage, only the gold had been replaced by orange, and the black was in a vertical double-stripe, with a snarling dragon's-head embroidered into the Silkwing-spun fabric. Already the dirt was beginning to show in ugly brown patches where dragon talons had scratched it, hustling in and out of the aforementioned canvas tent.

This was a place for command. It rejected the new way, for good or ill. Certainly Wasp's methods were useful; certainly they granted greater cohesion. It was in those moments that Venom was free that she feared this, feared being absorbed into a whole, and losing her individual nature.

"And you think the queen will keep her word?"

Those were the words of a Lt. General; low in pitch to a scavenger's ears, they stood in the high range for a dragon, or at any rate for a general. Generals were usually past thirty-five years of age when they reached the rank, and Venom was no young whippersnapper herself. The striped dragon standing before Venom was the youngest in HICOMCN, mostly for his logistical abilities. Like Bolt, of the 108th, his stripes were a faded gray instead of black. Unlike Bolt, his name began with an R.

"For now," said Venom. "It depends on how well Krait does. For the moment we'll keep Way dispatches to a minimum, giving them only when necessary. If Krait can pull ahead then there will be no reason not to force this down the throat of the entire army. Read off the ledgers, please."

Because major traditional transitions in the middle of a war were the best way to go about executing conflict.

"We'll start with the day's logistical reports," said Rattlesnake. An aide conveniently pulled the papers off a wooden temp shelf and put them in his right talon. They could've used filing cabinets, but it was prohibitive to bring them across the ocean. When a dragon's carrying capacity was a thousand pounds over that long trip, it was stupid to haul more metal than was required for weapons.

"Three hundred and thirty-seven thousand gallons required by each division in the theater, per day," said Rattlesnake. "Fourth, fifth, and sixth divisions fall under your command, but fifth and sixth are still arriving in the theater."

Wonderful.

It was not strictly necessary that a general be delivering the briefing; in fact, it would've worked better for the army if an aide was doing it. But – and here was one of the marks of bureaucracy – a dragon's career often depended on how well he could give a briefing. There were hidden rules. He must not point too much. His voice must remain even, changing in pitch only slightly when indicating points of importance – even though all of his briefing was supposed to be important. If there was a blackboard, he must write information quickly and legibly, while talking, while thinking about what he was going to say next. He must not rely on an overabundance of notes. And so on.

"We currently require approximately four hundred thousand gallons of fresh water, per day, for ordinary consumption. The rivers and watercourses here are able to provide that, barely."

"Take a note; tell the colonels to locate their staging areas as close to the rivers as possible."

"Yes ma'am."

"What about medical usages?"

Rattlesnake flipped a page.

"About ten thousand gallons pd, in camp. We don't know what's happening out on the front."

"We're not touching on that yet," said Venom. "Food reports?"

"About fifty tons pd per brigade pd. Normally dragons eat less than ten percent of their weight per day, but due to physical exertion our soldiers are approaching that number. Stores as brought from the Seagull Islands, one hundred eight tons per brigade."

"And foraging?"

Venom was getting one of those sinking feelings.

"Captured livestock plus civilian food stores plus hunting, forty-five tons pd, minus five pd in the distribution. Supply is bringing over an additional ten pd allocated for the front, but again five are consumed in distribution."

The general did the math.

"We'll be running out tomorrow."

"Dedicating more forces to foraging would greatly increase our intake, but we can't take too much, from what I know of animal husbandry," said Rattlesnake.

"Go on," said Venom. "I won't pretend to know more than you do."

"As soon as we cut into the female population of existing herds, future production will suffer. For best output we can only take non-breeding males for consumption. Further hindering us is the local lack of cooperation, and what little we get isn't dried."

"Dried meats would double the amount a dragon can keep on talon."

"Yes, ma'am. But they also marginally increase water consumption."

"An interesting bind. And the distilleries?"

Rattlesnake flipped another page, and his eyes scanned the wide paper until they found what he was looking for.

"Dried alcoholic byproducts as feedstuffs conventionally account for up to twenty-five percent of consumption, with otherwise processed plantstuffs accounting for a further thirty-five percent at home and the rest being accounted for by miscellaneous sources such as insects and actual meat."

"And we can't use unprocessed plantstuffs."

Rattlesnake sighed.

"Unfortunately, any carnivore that tried to eat a plant with too much fiber would die due to bloating."

"Too bad. On to the original report."

"Yes, sorry ma'am. Distilleries were set up by July 2nd. Foraging of adequate foodstuffs was completed by July 3rd. Creating mash and the fermentation of mash took three days – that was only done three days ago. Distilling the alcohol and byproducts took a further one and a half days. Drying the byproducts takes two days. Distribution at this point takes two days, maximum – but as we expand the supply chains this will take longer and longer."

Venom pursed her lips.

"And the end result?"

"Our units will receive new ration bars by evening on the tenth."

"But they're running out on the ninth."

"And our current supply can only keep up with demand."

Again Venom did the math.

"We went over this yesterday – that means a four-day freeze. When will insect farms be set up?"

"I'm not sure. Our stock didn't do well on the ocean crossing. The salt killed the specialized breeds we brought over live. My subordinates are telling me the soonest they can get production going is in a month, so the rations will be unsupplemented until then."

"There's a hard limit to this?"

"Yes," said Rattlesnake. "Fourteen days to hatching, another fourteen to maturity, and a couple allowed for processing."

"That's all I needed to know on that front. I'll sign a General Directive for a four-day freeze beginning tomorrow – assuming no supply interruptions. And, speaking of fronts, what's happening in regards to intelligence?"

Rattlesnake flipped two pages, paused, licked his talon, then split the stuck leaves and scanned the contents. He didn't like what he saw.

"We've been having supply interruptions, ma'am."

Venom raised a talon, then lowered it. "Go on."

"We lost sixteen soldiers and thirty tons of cargo, along with approximately forty slaves," said Rattlesnake. His voice contained no distaste at the 'working prisoners': for a Hivewing they might as well be useful chattel. "This happened on the sixth. We're thinking it happened about a hundred miles east of Azley, or six-score from here. Not far at all."

"And I didn't hear about it because?"

"They were only missed on the seventh because they failed to arrive, and by the time news got here you'd already had your briefing. The staff decided the loss of a convoy wasn't a significant enough event to wake you up over it."

Venom stepped back. "They were correct," she said. "Still, what happened to them?"

Rattlesnake shrugged.

"We don't know."

And in those three words was contained everything wrong with the current state of the world.

"Did they get lost?"

"That's unlikely. We have them all equipped with compasses and other navigation equipment; besides, if they missed their destination they likely would've reported in somewhere else. The most plausible explanation is hostile activity."

"How did they get through the front?"

Again Rattlesnake shrugged. "Probably by night. It could be local resistance operations. We don't know. Our intelligence is sorely lacking."

"Have an order drafted to task an element on getting the location of our assailants," said Venom. Suddenly she found herself rubbing her eyes. It was getting late, and the light was fading. Rattlesnake's grey scales faded into the canvas and it was making it hard to see. "And light a candle."

"Yes, ma'am."

Rattlesnake reached for the shelf, pulled away a longish, lightweight instrument of two levers and a spring. He then strode to the tentpole, onto which was fixed an iron candle-holder, pulled back one of the levers, and let go. The spring action did its job, and there was a flurry of bright sparks which left dots dancing in Venom's vision even as she blinked, too late. When she regained her vision a flame was sputtering to life in the room, sputtering cheerfully and granting the place a more substantial light than the wan illumination streaming down from the three moons.

"Flamesilk would be nice."

"It would," said Rattlesnake. "It was regarded as a nonessential item, unfortunately."

"We could dedicate a full order to tying down the countryside, but that would severely cripple our abilities on the front," said Venom. "Get a regiment on it anyway."

"Already noted, ma'am."

She'd said that before, damn. She was getting tired. "We've been sidetracked. How's the front going?"

It was difficult to display maps without a large table in the tent, but thankfully the side of the tent included a set of spring-loaded clips which held up parchment easily. Currently this map was displaying information from the sixth; Rattlesnake bade an aide take it down and put up the one staff had prepared for the eighth. This one was still mostly white, displaying unit locations, probable unit locations, and enemy positions without much terrain in the background. Still, two or three brooks had been added, and there was a considerable expansion of front. Bunched up together were symbols, and a line for where the front was, and a number spaced every few inches on that line to indicate the number of Hivewings per mile. Last map's unit symbols had been predominately regiments and brigades. Now they were brigades and battalions, all in the name of front security.

That front security had failed. Venom made a mental note to mention this in her General Directive. Such a thing could not be allowed to happen again.

"I note two more towns than we had yesterday," said Venom. "Nothing beyond the front. When are the recon brigades reporting back?"

"Within the week," said Rattlesnake. "They're all due to deposit info by the fourteenth, not later. 108th captured that north town there, Smolderfax, on the second, but the small garrison had local resistance problems on the fifth and it was only after the sixth that staff decided the situation was under control. The enemy there is still predominately of what we have tentatively named the mountain dragon type, or what our dragons on the front are beginning to call soots. You heard about them in the first intel briefing, but since then we've learned somewhat more about them. Previous assumptions about limitations to their endurance are incorrect; it appears that they can keep up thirty knots more or less indefinitely."

"And our forces are stuck at twenty," said Venom. She rubbed her jaw with the dull undersides of her talons, the left side of her snout bright with firelight, its opposite dark and shadowed. "We could waste an entire order chasing these guys around."

"The alternative is putting larger garrisons on our positions and waiting for them to come to us."

"We still have to have lines of communication," said Venom. "Get the combat elements of fifth and sixth divisions helping with construction and escort until the end of the expansion freeze, which I'm planning for the thirteenth. By that time we should have production of ration bars going and levies coming from captured ranches."

"Yes ma'am."

"I have a feeling the enemy would be a lot bolder if they knew the situation of our supply."

"They don't, ma'am," said Rattlesnake.

"For the best, I hope it stays that way."

"As do I, ma'am."

"Forget the hopes. Put out a memo about operational security."

"Yes ma'am."

"Attach it to the executive directive."

"It would be a security issue if the note fell into enemy claws," said Rattlesnake.

The general bit her lip, considering. "In for an ounce, in for a shekel," she said. "An executive directive is already secure information. Put it on."

"Got it."

She paced, shoulders and tail brushing the canvas of the tent, making it bulge where she walked and fall back to its concave state with a ripple after she passed, her talons softly crackling on the springy sward.

"Get me a quill and paper."

The aide pressed the items into her talon, and then paper pressed against shelf and the quill danced.

EXEC GEN DIRECTIVE 1: _All combat units __in 2__nd__ Cohort__ excepting recon __stop in place__frm 9__th__ July – 13__th__ July. __Combat readiness high, __patrols necessary; __stockpile excess supply for next offensive phase. Attack plans to be distributed per regiment. Signed, Venom._

It was done.

"Send this to staff for copy," said Venom. "I want it in Smolderfax by tomorrow afternoon."

"Yes ma'am," said Rattlesnake. "I will venture something."

"What?"

"Krait's in the same situation we are."

* * *

**Written July ****1****2****th****, 2020 – ****August 2****nd****.**

**Published August 2nd.**


End file.
